tathata Archives - Sat Sangha Salon

A Rhythm of One – Osho

First try to understand the word ‘suchness’. Buddha depends on that word very much. In Buddha’s own language it is tathata – suchness. The whole Buddhist meditation consists of living in this word, living with this word, so deeply that the word disappears and you become the suchness. For example, you are ill. The attitude of suchness is: accept it – and say to yourself, “Such is the way of the body,” or “Such are things.” Don’t create a fight, don’t start struggling. You have a headache – accept it. Such is the nature of things. Suddenly there is a change, because when this attitude comes in a change follows just like a shadow. If you can accept your headache, the headache disappears.

You try it. If you accept an illness, it starts dispersing. Why does it happen? It happens because whenever you are fighting, your energy is divided: half the energy moving into illness, the headache, and half the energy fighting the headache – a rift, a gap and the fight. Really this fight is a deeper headache.

Once you accept, once you don’t complain, once you don’t fight, the energy has become one within. The rift is bridged. And so much energy is released because now there is no conflict – the release of energy itself becomes a healing force. Healing doesn’t come from outside. All that medicines can do is to help the body to bring its own healing force into action. All that a doctor can do is just to help you to find your own healing power. Health cannot be forced from outside; it is your energy flowering.

This word ‘suchness’ can work so deeply that with physical illness, with mental illness and finally with spiritual illness – this is a secret method – they all dissolve. But start from the body, because that is the lowest layer. If you succeed there, then higher levels can be tried. If you fail there, then it will be difficult for you to move higher.

Something is wrong in the body: relax and accept it and simply say inside – not only in words but feel it deeply – that such is the nature of things. A body is a compound, so many things combined in it. The body is born, it is prone to death. And it is a mechanism, and complex; there is every possibility of something or other going wrong.

Accept it, and don’t be identified. When you accept you remain above, you remain beyond. When you fight you come to the same level. Acceptance is transcendence. When you accept, you are on a hill, the body is left behind. You say, “Yes, such is the nature. Things born will have to die. And if things born have to die they will be ill sometimes. Nothing to be worried about too much” – as if it is not happening to you, just happening in the world of the things.

This is the beauty: that when you are not fighting, you transcend. You are no more on the same level. And this transcendence becomes a healing force. Suddenly the body starts changing. And the same happens to mental worries, tensions, anxieties, anguish. You are worried about a certain thing. What is the worry? You cannot accept the fact, that’s the worry. You would like it in some way different from how it is happening. You are worried because you have some ideas to enforce on nature.

For example, you are getting old. You are worried. You would like to remain young forever – this is the worry. You love a wife, you depend on her and she is thinking to leave, or of moving with another man, and you are worried – worried because what will happen to you? You depend on her so much, you feel so much security with her. When she is gone there will be no security.

She has not only been a wife to you, she has been also a mother, a shelter; you can come and hide against the whole world. You can rely on her; she will be there. Even if the whole world is against you, she will not be against you, she is a consolation. Now she is leaving, what will happen to you? Suddenly you are in a panic, worried.

What are you saying? What are you saying by your worry? You are saying you cannot accept this happening; this should not be so. You expected it just the otherwise, just the contrary; you wanted this wife to be yours forever and ever, and now she is leaving. But what can you do? When love disappears what can you do? There is no way; you cannot force love, you cannot force this wife to remain with you. Yes, you can force – that’s what everybody is doing – you can force.

The dead body will be there, but the living spirit will have left. Then that will be a tension on you.

Against nature nothing can be done. Love was a flowering, now the flower has faded. The breeze has come into your house, now it has moved into another. Such is the way of things; they go on moving and changing. The world of things is a flux; nothing is permanent there. Don’t expect! If you expect permanency in the world where everything is impermanent, you will create worry. You would like this love to be forever. Nothing can be forever in this world – all that belongs to this world is momentary. This is the nature of things, suchness, tathata.

So you know now the love has disappeared. It gives you sadness – okay, accept sadness. You feel trembling – accept trembling, don’t suppress it. You feel like crying, cry. Accept it! Don’t force it, don’t make a face, don’t pretend that you are not worried, because that won’t help. If you are worried you are worried; if the wife is leaving, she is leaving; if the love is no more it is no more. You cannot fight the facticity; you have to accept it.

And if you accept it gradually, then you will be continuously in pain and suffering. If you accept it without any complaint, not in helplessness but in understanding, it becomes suchness. Then you are no more worried, then there is no problem – because the problem was arising not because of the fact, but because you couldn’t accept it the way it was happening. You wanted it to follow you.

Remember, life is not going to follow you, you have to follow life. Grudgingly, happily – that’s your choice. If you follow grudgingly, you will be in suffering. If you follow happily you become a Buddha, your life becomes an ecstasy. Buddha has also to die – things won’t change – but he dies in a different way. He dies so happily, as if there is no death. He simply disappears, because he says a thing which is born is going to die.

Birth implies death, so it is okay, nothing can be done about it.

You can be miserable and die. Then you miss the point, the beauty that death can give to you, the grace that happens in the last moment, the illumination that happens when body and soul part. You will miss that because you are so much worried, and you are so much clinging to the past and to the body that your eyes ate closed. You cannot see what is happening because you cannot accept it, so you close your eyes, you close your whole being. You die – you will die many times, and you will go on missing the point of it.

Death is beautiful if you can accept, if you can open the door with a welcoming heart, a warm reception: “yes, because if I am born, I am to die. So the day has come, the circle becomes complete.” You receive death as a guest, a welcome guest, and the quality of the phenomenon changes immediately.

Suddenly you are deathless: the body is dying; you are not dying. You can see now: only the clothes are dropping, not you; only the cover, the container, not the content. The consciousness remains in its illumination – more so because in life many were the covers on it, in death it is naked. And when consciousness is in total nakedness it has a splendor of its own; it is the most beautiful thing in the world. But for that an attitude of suchness has to be imbibed. When I say imbibed, I mean imbibed – not just a mental thought, not the philosophy of suchness, but your whole way of life becomes suchness.

You even don’t think about it; it simply becomes natural. You eat in suchness, you sleep in suchness, you breathe in suchness, you love in suchness, you weep in suchness. It becomes your very style; you need not bother about it, you need not think about it, it is the way you are. That is what I mean by the word ‘imbibe’. You imbibe it, you digest it, it flows in your blood, it goes deep in your bones, it reaches to the very beat of your heart. You accept.

Remember, the word ‘accept’ is not very good. It is loaded – because of you, not because of the word – because you accept only when you feel helpless. You accept grudgingly, you accept halfheartedly. You accept only when you cannot do anything, but deep down you still wish; you would have been happy if it had been otherwise. You accept like a beggar, not like a king – and the difference is great.

If the wife leaves or the husband leaves, finally you come to accept it. What can be done? You weep and cry and many nights you brood and worry, and many nightmares around you and suffering . . . and then what to do? Time heals, not understanding. Time – and remember, time is needed only because you are not understanding, otherwise instant healing happens.

Time is needed because you are not understanding. So by and by – six months, eight months, a year – things become dim, in the memory they are lost, covered with much dust. And a gap comes of one year; by and by you forget.

Still, sometimes the wound hurts. Sometimes a woman passes on the road and suddenly you remember. Some similarity, the way she walks, and the wife is remembered – and the wound. Then you fall in love with someone, then more dust gathers, then you remember less. But even with a new woman, sometimes the way she looks . . . and your wife. The way she sings in the bathroom . . . and the memory. And the wound is there, green.

It hurts because you carry the past. You carry everything, that’s why you are so much burdened. You carry everything! You were a child; the child is still there; you are carrying it. You were a young man; the young man is still there with all his wounds, experiences, stupidities – he is there. You carry your whole past, layers upon layers – everything is there. That’s why you sometimes regress. If something happens and you feel helpless, you start crying like a child. You have regressed in time; the child has taken over. The child is more efficient in weeping than you, so the child comes in and takes over, you start crying and weeping. You can even start kicking, just like a child in a tantrum. But everything is there.

Why is so much load carried? Because you never really accepted anything. Listen: if you

accept anything it simply never becomes a load, then the wound is not carried. You accept the phenomenon; there is nothing to carry from it, you are out of it. Through acceptance you are out of it. Through half – helpless acceptance it is carried.

Remember one thing: anything incomplete is carried by the mind forever and forever, anything complete, it is dropped. Because mind has a tendency to carry the incomplete things just in a hope that someday there may be an opportunity to complete them. You are still waiting for the wife to come, or for the husband, or for the days that have gone you are still waiting. You have not transcended the past.

And because of a too much loaded past, you cannot live in the present. Your present is a mess because of the past, and your future is also going to be the same – because the past will become more and more heavy. Every day it is becoming heavier and heavier.

When you really accept, in that attitude of suchness there is no grudge, you are not helpless. Simply you understand that this is the nature of things. For example, if I want to go out of this room I will go out through the door, not through the wall, because to enter the wall will be just hitting my head against it, it is simply foolish. This is the nature of the wall, to hinder, so you don’t try to pass through it! This is the nature of the door, that you pass through it – because the door is empty you can pass through it.

When a Buddha accepts, he accepts things like wall and door. He passes through the door; he says that is the only way. First you try to pass through the wall, and you wound yourself in many millions of ways. And when you cannot get out – crushed, defeated, depressed, fallen – then you crawl towards the door. You could have gone through the door in the first place. Why did you try and start fighting with the wall?

If you can look at things with a clarity, you simply don’t do things like this, trying to make a door out of a wall. If love disappears, it has disappeared! Now there is a wall – don’t try to go through it. Now the door is no more there, the heart is no more there, the heart has opened to somebody else. And you are not alone here; there are others also.

The door is no more for you, it has become a wall. Don’t try, and don’t knock your head on it. You will be wounded unnecessarily. And wounded, defeated, even the door will not be such a beautiful thing to pass through.

Simply look at things. If something is natural, don’t try to force any unnatural thing on it. Choose the door – be out of it. You are doing every day the foolishness of passing through the wall. Then you become tense, and then you feel continuous confusion. Anguish becomes your very life, the core of it – and then you ask for a meditation.

But why in the first place? Why not look at the facts as they are? Why can’t you look at the facts? Because your wishes are too much there. You go on hoping against all hope. That’s why you have become so hopeless a case.

Just look: whenever there is a situation, don’t desire anything, because desire will lead you astray. Don’t wish and don’t imagine. Simply look at the fact with your total consciousness available and suddenly a door opens and you never move through the wall, you move through the door, unscratched. Then you remain unloaded.

Remember, suchness is an understanding, not a helpless fate. So that’s the difference. People are there who believe in fate, destiny. They say, “What can you do? God has willed it such a way. My young child has died, so it is God’s will and this is my fate. It was written; it was going to happen.” But deep down there is rejection. These are just tricks to polish the rejection. Do you know God? Do you know fate? Do you know it was written? No, these are rationalizations – how you console yourself.

The attitude of suchness is not a fatalist attitude. It does not bring in a God, or a fate, or a destiny – nothing. It says simply look at things. Simply look at the facticity of things, understand, and there is a door, there is always a door. You transcend.

Suchness means acceptance with a total welcoming heart, not in helplessness.

In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other than self.

And once you merge – you are merged into a suchness, in tathata, in understanding – there is no one as you and there is no one as other-than-you, no self, no other-self. In a suchness, in a deep understanding of the nature of things, boundaries disappear.

Mulla Nasruddin was ill. The doctor examined him and said, “Fine, Nasruddin, very fine. You are improving, you are doing well, everything is almost okay. Just a little thing has remained; your floating kidney is not yet right. But I don’t worry a bit about it.”

Nasruddin looked at the doctor and said, “Do you think if your floating kidney was not all right I would worry about it?”

The mind always divides: the other and I. And the moment you divide I and the other, the other becomes the enemy, the other cannot be a friend. This is one of the basic things to be deeply understood, you need a penetration into it. The other cannot be the friend, the other is the enemy. In his very being the other, he is your enemy.

Some are more inimical, some less, but the other remains the enemy. Who is a friend? The least of the enemies, really, nothing else. The friend is one who is least inimical towards you and the enemy is one who is least friendly towards you, but they stand in a queue. The friend stands nearer, the enemy further away, but they all are enemies. The other cannot be a friend. It is impossible, because with the other there is bound to be competition, jealousy, struggle.

You are fighting with friends also – of course, fighting in a friendly way. You are competing with friends also, because your ambitions are the same as theirs. You want to attain prestige, power; they also want to attain prestige and power. You would like to have a big empire around you, they also. You are fighting for the same, and only a few can have it.

It is impossible to have friends in the world. Buddha has friends, you have enemies. Buddha cannot have an enemy, you cannot have a friend. Why does Buddha have friends? Because the other has disappeared, now there is nobody who is other than him. And when this other disappears the I also has to disappear, because they are two poles of one phenomenon. Here inside exists the ego, and there outside exists the other – two poles of one phenomenon. If one pole disappears, if ‘you’ disappears, ‘I’ disappears with it; if ‘I’ disappears, ‘you’ disappears.

You cannot make the other disappear, you can only make yourself disappear. If you disappear there is no other; when the I is dropped there is no thou. That’s the only way. But we try, we try just the opposite – we try to kill the ‘you’. The ‘you’ cannot be killed, the ‘you’ cannot be possessed, dominated. The ‘you’ will remain a rebellion, because the ’you’ is in an effort to kill you. You are both fighting for the same ego – he for his, you for yours. The whole politics of the world is how to kill the ‘you’ so that only ‘I’ is left and everything is at peace. Because when there is nobody else, you alone are there, everything will be at peace. But this has never happened and will never happen. How can you kill the other? How can you destroy the other? The other is vast, the whole universe is the other.

Religion works through a different dimension: it tries to drop the I. And once the I is dropped there is no other, the other disappears. That’s why you cling to your complaints and grudges – because they help the I to be there. If the shoe pinches, then the I can exist more easily. If the shoe is not pinching, the foot is forgotten – then the I disappears.

People cling to their diseases, they cling to their complaints, they cling to all that pinches. And they go on saying that “These are wounds and we would like them to be healed.” But deep down they go on making the wounds, because if all the wounds are healed, they will not be there.

Just watch people – they cling to their illness. They talk about it as if it is something worth talking about. People talk about illness, about their negative moods, more than about anything else. Listen to them, and you will see that they are enjoying talking about it.

Every evening I have to listen, for many years I have been listening. Look at their faces, they are enjoying it! They are martyrs . . . their illness, their anger, their hatred, their this problem and that, their greed, ambition. And just look, the whole thing is simply crazy – because they are asking to get rid of those things, but look at their faces, they are enjoying it. And if they are really gone, what will they enjoy then? If all their illnesses disappear and they are completely whole and healthy, there will be nothing for them to talk about.

People go to psychiatrists and then they go on talking about it, that they have visited this psychiatrist and that, they have been to this Master and that. Really, they enjoy saying that “All, everybody, has failed with me. I am still the same, nobody has been able to change me.” They enjoy this, as if they are succeeding because they are proving every psychiatrist a failure. All ‘pathies’ have become failures.

I have heard about one man who was a hypochondriac, continuously talking about his illnesses. And nobody believed him, because he was checked and examined in every possible way and nothing was wrong. But every day he would run to the doctor – he was in serious difficulty.

Then by and by the doctor became aware that “Whatsoever he hears – if on the TV there is an advertisement about some medicine and talk about some illness – immediately that illness comes to him. If he reads about any illness in a magazine, immediately, the next day, he is there at the doctor’s office – ill, completely ill. And he imitates all the symptoms.”

So the doctor said once to him, “Don’t bother me too much, because I read the same magazines you read and I listen to the same TV program you listen to. And just the next day you are here with the disease.”

Said the man, “What do you think? Are you the only doctor in town?”

He stopped coming to this doctor, but he would not stop his madness about illness.

Then he died, as everybody has to die. Before his death he told his wife to write a few words on a marble stone on his grave. They are still written there. In big letters on his gravestone it is written: “Now do you believe that I was right?”

People feel so happy about their misery. I also feel sometimes that if all their misery disappears, what will they do? They will be so unoccupied they will simply commit suicide. And this has been my observation: you help them come out of one, the next day they are present there with something else. You help them to come out of that, they are again ready . . . as if there is a deep clinging to misery. They are getting something out of it, it is an investment – and it is paying.

What is the investment? The investment is that when the shoe is not fitting, you feel more that you are. When the shoe fits completely, you simply relax. If the shoe fits completely, not only is the foot forgotten, the I disappears. There cannot be any I with a blissful consciousness – impossible!

Only with a miserable mind can the I exist; the I is nothing but a combination of all your miseries. So if you are really ready to drop the I, only then will your miseries disappear. Otherwise, you will go on creating new miseries. Nobody can help you, because you are on a path which is self-destructive, self-defeating.

So whenever next time you come to me with any problem, just first inquire inside whether you would like it to be solved, because be aware – I can give it. Are you really interested in solving it or just talking about it? You feel good talking about it.

Go inwards and inquire, and you will feel: all your miseries exist because you support them. Without your support nothing can exist. Because you give it energy, then it exists; if you don’t give it energy it cannot exist. And who is forcing you to give it energy? Even when you are sad, energy is needed, because without energy you cannot be sad.

To make the phenomenon of sadness happen, you have to give energy. That’s why after sadness you feel so dissipated, drained. What happened? – because in depression you were not doing anything, you were simply sad. So why do you feel so much dissipated and drained? Out of sadness you must have come full of energy – but no.

Remember, all negative emotions need energy, they drain you. And all positive emotions and positive attitudes are dynamos of energy; they create more energy, they never drain you. If you are happy, suddenly the whole world flows towards you with energy, the whole world laughs with you. And people are right in their proverbs if they say: “When you laugh, the whole world laughs with you. When you weep, you weep alone.” It is true, it is absolutely true.

When you are positive the whole existence goes on giving you more, because when you are happy the whole existence is happy with you. You are not a burden, you are a flower; you are not a rock, you are a bird. The whole existence feels happy about you.

When you are like a rock, sitting dead with your sadness, nursing your sadness, nobody is with you.

Nobody can be with you. There simply comes a gap between you and the life. Then whatsoever you are doing, you have to depend on your energy source. It will be dissipated, you are wasting your energy, you are being drained by your own nonsense.

But one thing is there, that when you are sad and negative you will feel more ego. When you are happy, blissful, ecstatic, you will not feel the ego. When you are happy and ecstatic there is no I, and the other disappears. You are bridged with existence, not broken apart – you are together.

When you are sad, angry, greedy, moving just within yourself and enjoying your wounds and seeing them again and again, playing with your wounds, trying to be a martyr, there is a gap between you and existence. You are left alone, and there you will feel I. And when you feel I, the whole existence becomes inimical to you. Not that it becomes inimical because of your I – it appears to be inimical.

And if you see that everybody is the enemy, you will behave in such a way that everybody has to be the enemy.

In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other-than self.

When you accept nature and dissolve into it, you move with it. You don’t have any steps of your own, you don’t have any dance of your own, you don’t have even a small song to sing of our own – the whole’s song is your song, the whole’s dance is your dance. You are no more apart.

You don’t feel that “I am”; you simply feel, “The whole is. I am just a wave, coming and going, arrival and departure, being and non-being. I come and go, the whole remains. And I exist because of the whole, the whole exists through me.”

Sometimes it takes forms, sometimes it becomes formless – both are beautiful. Sometimes it arises in a body, sometimes it disappears from the body. It has to be so, because life is a rhythm. Sometimes you have to be in the form, then you have to rest from the form. Sometimes you have to be active and moving, a wave, and sometimes you go to the depth and rest, unmoving. Life is a rhythm.

Death is not the enemy. It is just a change of the rhythm, moving to the other. Soon you will be born – alive, younger, fresher. Death is a necessity. YOU are not dying in death; only all the dust that has gathered around you has to be washed. That is the only way to be rejuvenated. Not only Jesus is resurrected, everything is resurrected in existence.

Just now the almond tree outside has dropped all his old leaves, now new leaves have replaced them. This is the way! If the tree clings to the old leaves then it will never be new, and then it will get rotten. Why create a conflict? The old disappears just for the new to come. It gives place, it makes space, room, for the new to come. And new will always be coming and old will always be going.

You don’t die. Only the old leaf drops, just to make room for the new. Here you die, there you are born; here you disappear, there you appear. From the form to the formless, from the formless to the form; from the body to the no-body, from the no-body to the body; movement, rest; rest, movement – this is the rhythm. If you look at the rhythm you are not worried about anything, you trust.

In the world of suchness, in the world of trust, there is neither self nor other-than self.

Then you are not there, neither is there any thou. Both have disappeared, both have become a rhythm of one. That one exists, that one is the reality, the truth.

-Osho

From Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing, Discourse #9

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

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Take Note Twice: The Buddhist Meditation Technique of Taking Note – Osho

The Lord said:

‘The Tathagata speaks in accordance with reality, speaks the truth, speaks of what is, not otherwise.

Tathagata, Subhuti, is synonymous with true suchness.’

The word suchness is of immense importance in Buddha’s approach towards reality. The word suchness is as important in Buddhism as God is in other religions.

The Buddhist word for suchness is tathata. It means, “Seeing things are such, don’t take any attitude, don’t make any opinion, don’t judge or condemn.” The Buddhist meditation consists of suchness. The method is very practical and very deep-going. Buddha has said to his disciples, “Just watch things as they are, without interfering.” For example, you have a headache. The moment you note it, immediately the opinion enters that “this is not good. Why should I have a headache? What should I do not to have it?” You are immediately worried, you have taken an opinion, you are against it, you have started repressing it. Either you have to repress it chemically, through an Aspro or Novalgin, or you have to repress it in the consciousness — you don’t look at it, you put it aside. You get involved in something else, you want to be distracted in something else so you can forget it. But in both ways you have missed suchness.

What will Buddha suggest? Buddha says take note twice, “Headache, headache.” Don’t feel inimical towards it, neither friendly nor antagonistic. Just take a simple note, as if it has nothing to do with you: “Headache, headache.” And remain undisturbed, undistracted, uninfluenced by it, without any opinion.

See the point. Immediately, ninety percent of the headache is gone . . . because a headache is not a real headache, ninety percent arises out of the antagonistic opinion. Immediately you will see that the greater part of it is no longer there. And another thing will be noted: sooner or later you will see that the headache is disappearing in something else — maybe you are now feeling anger. What happened? If you repress the headache you will never come to know what its real message was. The headache was there just as an indicator that you are full of anger in this moment and the anger is creating a tension in the head, hence the headache. But you watched, you simply took note of it — “Headache, headache” — you remained impartial, objective.

Then the headache disappears. And the headache gives you the message that “I am not a headache, I am anger.” Now Buddha says take note again, “Anger, anger.” Now don’t become angry with anger, otherwise again you are trapped and you have missed suchness. If you say, “Anger, anger,” ninety percent of the anger will be gone immediately. This is a very practical method. And the ten percent that will be left will release its message. You may come to see that it is not anger, it is ego. Take note again: “Ego, ego.” And so on and so forth. One thing is connected with another, and the deeper you move the closer you come to the original cause. And once you have come to the original cause, the chain is broken – there is no beyond it.

A moment will come when you will take note of the last link in the chain, and then nothingness. Then you are released from the whole chain, and there will arise great purity, great silence. That silence is called suchness.

This has to be practiced continuously. Sometimes it may happen that you forget, and you have made an opinion unconsciously, mechanically. Then Buddha says remember again, “Opinion, opinion.” Now don’t get distracted by this — that you have made an opinion. Don’t get depressed that you have missed. Just take note, “Opinion, opinion,” and suddenly you will see — ninety percent of the opinion is gone, ten percent remains, and that releases its message to you. What is its message? The message is that there is some inhibition, some taboo; out of that taboo the opinion has arisen.

A sex desire comes in the mind and immediately you say, “This is bad.” This is opinion. Why is it bad? — Because you have been taught it is bad, it is a taboo. Take note, “Taboo, taboo,” and go on.

Sometimes it will also happen that you have judged — not only judged, you have made an opinion; not only made an opinion, you have become depressed that you have missed. Then take note again, “Depression, depression,” and go on.

Whenever you become conscious, at whatsoever point, from there take note — just a simple note — and leave the whole thing. And soon you will see the entangled mind is no longer as entangled as it has always been. Things start disappearing, and there will be moments of suchness, tathata, when you will be simply there and the existence is there and there is no opinion between you and existence. All is undisturbed by thought, unpolluted by thought. Existence is, but mind has disappeared. That state of no-mind is called suchness.

Buddha says A Tathagata is synonymous with suchness. Synonymous — not that he has the quality of suchness, he is suchness.

And Buddha says: A Tathagata speaks in accordance with reality. He cannot do otherwise. It is not that he chooses to speak in accordance with reality – there is no choice. Whatsoever is real is spoken through him. It is not that he chooses, “This is real and I should speak this, and that is unreal and I will not speak that.” If that choice has arisen, you are not a Buddha yet.

A Tathagata speaks out of choicelessness. So it is not that the Tathagata speaks truth. In fact it should be said in this way, that whatsoever is spoken by a Tathagata is truth. He speaks in accordance with reality. In fact, reality speaks through him. He is just a medium, a hollow bamboo. The reality sings its song through him, he has no song of his own. All his opinions have disappeared and he himself has disappeared. He is pure space. Truth can pass through him into the world, truth can descend through him into the world. He . . . speaks the truth, he speaks of what is. . .

Yatha bhutam – whatsoever is the case, he speaks. He has no mind about it, he never interferes. He does not drop a thing, he does not add a thing. He is a mirror: whatsoever comes in front of the mirror the mirror reflects. This reflectiveness is suchness.

‘A Tathagata, Subhuti, is synonymous with true suchness.’

And why does he say true suchness? Is there some untrue suchness too? Yes. You can practice. You can practice, you can cultivate a certain quality called suchness, but that will not be true. The true suchness has not to be cultivated, it comes.

For example, what do I mean when I say you can cultivate? You can decide, “I will only speak the truth, whatsoever the consequence. Even if I have to lose my life I will speak the truth.” And you speak the truth — but this is not true suchness, it is your decision. The untruth arises in you. You go on pushing down the untruth. You say, “I have decided that even if my life is at stake I am going to be true.” It is effort. Truth has become your prestige. Deep down you are longing to be a martyr. Deep down you want to let the whole world know that you are a truthful man, that you are ready to sacrifice your life also for it; you are a great man, a mahatma. And you sacrifice your life, but it is not true suchness.

True suchness knows nothing of choice. You are simply an instrument of reality. You don’t come in, you don’t stand in between, you simply have withdrawn yourself. The mirror docs not decide, “This man is standing in front of me. I am going to show him his real face, whatsoever the consequence. Even if he throws a stone at me — because he is so ugly, he may get angry — but I am going to show him his real face.”

If a mirror thinks that way then the mirror is no longer a mirror — mind has come in. It is not mirroring, it is his decision. The purity is lost. But a mirror is simply there, it has no mind. So is a Buddha. That’s why Buddha uses the word ‘true’ suchness.

This Buddhist meditation of taking note — try it, play with it. I cannot say practice it; I can only say play with it. Sitting, walking, sometimes remember it — just play with it. And you will be surprised that Buddha has given to the world one of the greatest techniques to penetrate into your innermost core.

Psychoanalysis does not go that deep. It also depends on something like this – free association of thoughts — but it remains superficial, because the other’s presence is a hindrance. The psychoanalyst is sitting there; even if he is sitting behind a screen, but you know he is there. That very knowledge that somebody is there hinders. You cannot be a real mirror, because the presence of the other cannot allow you to open totally. You can open totally only to your own self.

Buddha’s method is far more deep-going because it is not to be told to anybody else. You have just to take note inside. It is subjective and yet objective. The phenomenon has to happen in your subjectivity, but you have to remain objective.

Just take note, and go on taking note as if it is none of your business, as if it is not happening to you, as if you have been appointed to do some job: “Stand on this corner of the road and just take note of whosoever passes by. A woman, a woman. A dog, a dog. A car, a car.” You have nothing to do, you are not involved. You are absolutely aloof, distant.

It can take you from one thing to another. And one moment comes when you have reached to the very cause of a certain chain. And there are many chains in your being, thousands of threads have got intertwined into each other. You have become a mess. You will have to follow each thread, slowly, slowly, and you will have to come to the end of each thread. Once the end is reached, that chain disappears from your being. You are less burdened.

Slowly, slowly, one day it happens — all threads have disappeared, because you have looked into all causes that were causing them. They were effects. One day, when all causes have been looked into, you have observed everything — all the games of the mind that it goes on playing with you, all the tricks and cunningnesses of it, all the deceptions and mischiefs — the whole mind disappears, as if it has never been there.

There is a famous sutra which Buddha has said about the mind, about life, about existence. The sutra is one of the most golden ones. He says:

Think about the mind
As stars, a fault of vision, as a lamp,
A mock show, dewdrops, or a bubble,
A dream, a lightning flash, or cloud,
So should one view what is conditioned.

Mind is a conditioned phenomenon. It is the effect of some causes. You cannot destroy the effects directly, you will have to go to the causes. You cannot destroy a tree just by cutting its branches and leaves and foliage; you will have to go to the roots — and roots are hidden underneath. So are the roots in you. These things have to be understood. Buddha says, “Think of your mind as stars.” Why? Stars exist only in darkness. When the morning comes and the sun rises, they disappear.

So is your mind; it exists only in unconsciousness. When the sun of consciousness rises it disappears — just like stars. Don’t fight with the stars. You will not be able to destroy them, they are millions. Just become more aware and they will disappear on their own accord.

A fault of vision . . . Your eye is ill, it has some fault. Then you see things which are not there. For example, you may be seeing double or you may be seeing patterns, because your eye is not as it should be. If your liver is not good your eyes will start seeing things which are not there; a weak liver, and eyes will see patterns in the air, bubbles, designs, patterns. They are not really there, they are caused by your eye itself. You cannot fight with them, you cannot destroy them, because they don’t exist. All that is needed is that you will have to go to a physician. Your eye needs treatment, your eye needs to be cured.

Buddha used to say, “I am not a philosopher, I am a physician. I don’t give you a doctrine, I doctor you. I don’t give you a theory, I simply give you a medicine. I don’t talk about what light is, I only help you open your eyes so you yourself can see it.”

The blind man cannot be helped by definitions of light and color and rainbows. The only help possible is that his eyes have to be brought back. You cannot explain to a deaf person what music is. Only when he can hear will he know. The experience is the only explanation.

Third, Buddha says think of the mind as a lamp. Why as a lamp? The lamp burns only while the oil in it lasts. Once the oil is finished the flame disappears. So is the mind – and the oil is the desire. If there are desires in the mind, the mind will remain alive. Don’t fight with the flame, just don’t go on pouring fuel on it. Desire is the fuel.

Desire means that which is, you are not satisfied with it, you want something else. You are not living in suchness — that’s what desire means. Desire means you want things to be other than they are. You don’t want them the way they are. You have your own ideas, you have your private dreams to impose upon reality. You are not contented with reality as such, you want to change it according to your heart’s desire. Then mind will remain. Mind exists because you are not contented with reality.

So many people come to me and they ask, “How to stop the thoughts?” They want to stop the thoughts directly. They cannot be stopped. Thoughts exist because desires exist. Unless you understand desire and drop desire, you will not be able to drop thoughts — because thoughts are by-products.

First the desire comes in. You see a beautiful car passing by and a desire arises. Buddha will say, “Say, ‘Car, car.’ Finished. If a desire has arisen in you, say again, ‘Desire, desire,’ and be finished”. But you have seen a beautiful car, and a dream, a desire, takes possession of you.

Now so many thoughts will arise — “How can I manage to purchase this car. Should I sell my house? Should I go to the bank? Should I earn more money, legal/illegal? What should I do? This car has to be possessed.” Now how can you stop thoughts? […]

But if you don’t drop desire, how can you stop thinking? Thinking comes as a help. You want to be the chief minister, the mind starts spinning and weaving. The mind says, “Now I have to look into things, into how it should be managed.” Now there are a thousand and one problems to be solved, only then can your desire be fulfilled. Thinking is a device of desire to fulfill itself. You cannot stop thinking directly.

Buddha says desire is like oil in a lamp. If the oil is no more, the flame will disappear on its own.

Think of mind as a lamp, think of mind as a mock show, a magic show. Nothing is substantial there, it is a kind of hypnotic state. The hypnotist has hypnotized you and he says, “Look — the animal, the camel is coming.” And there arises a form of a camel in your mind, and you start looking at the camel and the camel is there — for you. Everybody is laughing, because nobody is seeing the camel but you are seeing it.

Your mind is a magic-box, that’s what Buddha has said again and again. It goes on creating phantoms, imaginations, which have no substance in them — but if you want to believe in them, they will become real. Your mind is a great mock show. In fact the English word magic comes from the Indian word maya. Maya means illusion.

Illusions can be created, and you all create illusions. You see a woman, but you never see yatha buhtam — as she is. That’s why there is so much frustration afterwards. You start seeing things which are not there, which are only projections of your mind. You project beauty, you project a thousand and one things on the poor woman. When you come closer, when you are able to live with the woman, those phantoms will start wearing out. Those imaginations cannot persist against reality for long, the woman’s reality will assert. And then you will feel cheated and you will think she has cheated you.

She has not done a thing. She herself is feeling cheated by you, because she has also projected something on you. She was thinking you are a hero, an Alexander or something, a great man, and now you are just a mouse and nothing else. And she was thinking you are a mountain — you are not even a molehill! She feels cheated. You both feel cheated, you both feel frustrated.

I have heard:

A woman walked into the Missing Persons Bureau. “My husband disappeared last night,” she reported.

“We’ll do our best to find him,” the officers assured her. “Kindly give us a description of the man.”

“Well,” she waited a little and then said, “he’s about five feet tall, wears thick glasses, has a bald head, drinks a lot, has a red nose, has a high squeaky voice . . .” And then she stopped and thought for a moment, and said, “Oh, just forget the whole thing!”

If you see the reality, that is how it is. You will say, “Oh, forget the whole thing.” But you don’t see. You go on projecting. […]

Buddha says it is a mock show. Be aware — your mind is a magician. It shows you things which are not there, which have never been there. It deludes you, it creates an unreal world around you, and then you live in that unreal world.

This world of trees and birds and animals and mountains is not unreal! But the world that your mind creates is unreal.

When you hear people like Buddha talking about the unreality of the world, don’t misunderstand them. They don’t mean that the trees are unreal, they don’t mean that the people are unreal. They mean that whatsoever you have been thinking about reality is unreal — your mind is unreal. Once mind is dropped, all is real. Then you live in suchness, then you become tathata, then you are suchness.

The professor was telling his 8 a.m. class, “I have found that the best way to start the day is to exercise for five minutes, take a deep breath of air and then finish with a cold shower. Then I feel rosy all over.”

A sleepy voice from the back of the room responded, “Tell us more about Rosy!”

The mind is ready to jump upon anything, to project. Be very careful with the mind. That’s what meditation is all about — being careful, being not deceived by the mind.

The fifth thing: think of the mind as dew drops. Very fragile . . . Just for the moment the dewdrops exist. Comes the morning sun and they evaporate. Comes a little breeze and they slip and are gone. So is the mind. It knows nothing of reality, knows nothing of eternity. It is a time-phenomenon. Think of it as dewdrops. But you think of it as pearls, diamonds — as if it is going to stay.

And you need not believe in Buddha, you just watch your mind. It is not the same even for two consecutive moments. It goes on changing, it is a flux. One moment it is this, another moment it is that. One moment you are in deep love, another moment you are in deep hate. One moment you are so happy, and another moment you are so unhappy. Just watch your mind!

If you cling with this mind, you will always remain in a turmoil, because you will never be able to remain in silence — something or other will go on happening. And you will never be able to have any taste of eternity and only that taste fulfills. Time is constant change.

And sixth: think of your mind as a bubble. Like bubbles, all mind experiences burst sooner or later and then nothingness is left in the hands. Go after the mind — it is a bubble. And sometimes the bubble looks very beautiful. In the sunrays it may look like a rainbow, it may have all the colors of the rainbow, and it looks really enchanting, majestic. But go rushing for it, catch hold of it, and the moment you catch hold of it, it is no longer there.

And that’s what happens every day in your life. You go on rushing after this and that, and the moment you catch hold of something it is no longer the same. Then all beauty is gone — that beauty was only in your imagination. Then all joy is gone — that joy was only in your hope. Then all those ecstasies that you were thinking were going to happen, do not happen — they were only in your imagination, they were only in the waiting.

Reality is totally different than these bubbles of your imagination — and they all burst. Failure frustrates, so does success. Success also frustrates, ask the successful people. Poverty is frustrating, so is richness, ask the rich people. Everything, good or bad, is frustrating because all are mind-bubbles. But we go on chasing the bubbles — not only chasing, we want to make them bigger and bigger and bigger. There is a great mania in the world to make every experience bigger.

There is a story to the effect that a group of students from different nations were asked to write individual essays on the elephant. A German student wrote on the uses of the elephant in warfare. An English student, on the elephant’s aristocratic character. A French student, on lovemaking among the elephants. An Indian, on the elephant’s philosophical attitude. And an American chose for his subject, how to make bigger and better elephants.

The mind is continuously thinking. The mind is American, how to make things bigger — a bigger house, a bigger car, everything has to be bigger. And naturally, the bigger the bubble becomes the closer it comes to bursting. Small bubbles may float a little longer on the surface of the water; bigger bubbles cannot even float that much. Hence the American frustration. Nobody is as frustrated as the American.

The American mind has succeeded in making the bubble very big; now it is bursting from everywhere. Now there seems to be no possibility to protect it, to save it; it is exploding. And nobody is at fault, because nobody thinks, “It is our deepest desire and we have succeeded in it.” Nothing fails like success.

Seventh: Buddha says think of the mind as a dream. It is imagination, subjective, one’s own creation. You are the director, you are the actor and you are the audience. All that goes on in your mind is a private imagination. The world has nothing to do with it. The existence has no obligation to fulfill it.

A doctor had just finished giving a patient, who was quite a bit more than middle-aged, a thorough physical examination. “I can’t find a thing wrong with you, sir,” the doctor said. “But I recommend you give up about half of your love life.”

The old man stared at the doctor for a moment and then said, “Which half – thinking about it or talking about it?”

Mind is insubstantial — thinking or talking. It knows nothing of the real. The more mind you have the less reality you will have; the less mind you have the more reality. The no-mind knows what reality is, tathata. Then you become a tathagata — one who has known suchness.

Or think of the mind as a lightning flash, says Buddha. Don’t cling to it, because the moment you cling to it you will create suffering for yourself. The lightning is only for the moment there, and it is gone. Everything comes and goes, nothing remains, and we go on clinging. And by clinging we go on creating misery.

Watch your mind, how ready it is to cling to anything, how afraid the mind is of the future, of change. It wants to make everything stable, it wants to cling to everything that happens. You are happy, you want this happiness to remain. You will cling with it. And the moment you cling you have crushed it already, it is no more there.

You have met a man, a woman, you are in love, and you cling and you want this love to stay forever. In that very moment — when you desire that the love should stay forever – it has disappeared. It is no longer there. All mind experiences are like lightning, they come and they go.

Buddha says: “You simply watch.” There is not time enough to cling! You simply watch, take note: “Headache, headache.” “Love, love.” “Beauty, beauty.” Just take note. That is enough. It is such a small moment that nothing more can be done. Take note and become aware.

Awareness can become your eternity — nothing else.

And the last thing, the ninth: Buddha says think about mind experiences as clouds, changing forms, fluxes. You look at the cloud; sometimes the cloud is like an elephant, and immediately it starts changing and becomes a camel or a horse, and so many things. It goes on changing. It is never static, so many forms arise and disappear. But you are not worried. What does it matter to you whether the cloud looks like an elephant or it looks like a camel? It does not matter, it is just a cloud.

So is the mind a cloud around your consciousness. Your consciousness is the sky and the mind is the cloud. Sometimes it is an anger cloud, sometimes it is a love cloud, sometimes it is a greed cloud — but these are forms of the same energy. Don’t choose, don’t become attached. If you become attached with the elephant in the cloud you will be miserable. Next time you will see that the elephant is gone and you will cry and you will weep. But who is responsible? Is the cloud responsible? The cloud is simply following its nature. You just remember — a cloud is there to change, so is the mind.

Watch from your inner sky and let the clouds float. Become just a watcher. And remember, clouds will come and go, you can remain indifferent.

Buddha has given indifference very great value. He calls it upeksha. Remain indifferent, it doesn’t matter.

Two astronauts, a man and a woman, were visiting the planet Mars, where they found the Martians very hospitable and eager to show them around. After a few days the astronauts decided to pose a pressing question to their hosts, “How is life reproduced on Mars?”

The Martian leader proceeded to take the astronauts to a laboratory where he showed them how it was done. First he measured some white liquid into a tube, and then carefully sprinkled a brown powder on top, stirred the mixture and set it aside. In nine months, the astronauts were told, this mixture would develop into a new Martian.

Then it was the turn of the Martians to ask how life was reproduced on earth. The astronauts, a bit embarrassed, eventually gathered courage to give a demonstration, and began to make love. They were interrupted, however, by the hysterical laughter of the Martians.

“What is so funny?” the astronauts asked.

“That,” replied the Martian leader, “is how we make Nescafe.”

All forms. One need not be worried about these forms. Just watch. Think of mind . . .

As stars, a fault of vision, as a lamp,
A mock show, dewdrops, or a bubble,
A dream, a lightning flash, or cloud,
So should one view what is conditioned.

And then the conditioning disappears, and you come to the unconditioned. That unconditioned is suchness, truth, reality – yatha bhutam.

-Osho

From The Diamond Sutra, Discourse #11

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

No Water, No Moon – Osho

Just before Ninakawa passed away the Zen master Ikkyu visited him. “Shall I lead you on?” Ikkyu asked.

Ninakawa replied, “I came here alone, and I go alone. What help could you be to me?”

Ikkyu aswered, “If you think you really come and go, that is your delusion. Let me show you the path in which there is no coming and going.”

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.

Death is the crescendo, the highest peak that life can attain. In the moment of death much is possible. If you have been preparing and preparing, meditating and waiting, then at the moment of death enlightenment is very easily possible – because death and enlightenment are similar. A master, one who is enlightened, can easily make you enlightened at the moment of death. Even before, whenever it happens, you have to be ready to die.

What happens in death? Suddenly you are losing your body, suddenly you are losing your mind. Suddenly you feel you are going away from yourself – all that you believe to be yourself. It is painful, because you feel you are going to be drowned into emptiness. You will be nowhere now, because you were always identified with the body and the mind, and you never knew the beyond; you never knew yourself beyond the body and the mind. You got so fixed and obsessed with the periphery that the center was completely forgotten.

In death you have to encounter this fact: that the body is going, now it cannot be retained any more. The mind is leaving you – now you are no more in control of the mind. The ego is dissolving – you cannot even say ‘I’. You tremble with fear, on the verge of nothingness. You will be no more.

But if you have been preparing, if you have been meditating – and preparation means if you have been making all efforts to use death, to use this abyss of nothingness – rather than being pulled into it you have been getting ready to jump into it, it makes a lot of difference. If you are being pulled into it, grudgingly – you don’t want to go into it and you have been snatched – then it is painful. Much anguish! And the anguish is so intense that you will become unconscious in the moment of death. Then you miss.

But if you are ready to jump there is no anguish. If you accept and welcome it, and there is no complaint – rather, you are happy and celebrating that the moment has come, and now I can jump out of this body which is a limitation, can jump out of this body which is a confinement, can jump out of this ego which has always been a suffering – if you can welcome, then there is no need to become unconscious. If you can become accepting, welcoming – what Buddhists call tathata, to accept it, and not only to accept, because the word accept is not very good, deep down some nonacceptance is hidden in it – no, if you welcome, if it is such a celebration, an ecstasy, if it is a benediction, then you need not become unconscious.

If it is a benediction, you will become perfectly conscious in that moment. Remember these two things: if you reject, if you say no, you will become totally unconscious; if you accept, welcome, and say yes with your full heart, you will become perfectly conscious. Yes to death makes you perfectly conscious; no to death makes you perfectly unconscious – and these are the two ways of dying.

A Buddha dies totally accepting. There is no resistance, no fight between him and death. Death is divine; you die fighting.

If a man has been preparing, getting ready, at the moment of death the master can be miraculously helpful. Just a word at the right moment and the flame inside suddenly explodes, you become enlightened – because the moment is such, so intense, you are so concentrated at one point.

This is happening in this story. Ikkyu is one of the greatest masters, a very rare, revolutionary, nonconformist. Once he stayed in a temple. The night was very cold and there were three wooden Buddhas in the temple, so he burned one Buddha to warm himself. The priest became aware – he was fast asleep, it was in the middle of the night and the night was very cold – he became aware that something was going on, so he looked.

Buddha was burning! – and this man Ikkyu was sitting, happy, warming his hands. The priest became mad; he said, “What are you doing? Are you a madman? – and I thought you to be a Buddhist monk, that’s why I allowed you to stay in the temple. And you have done the most sacrilegious act.”

Ikkyu looked at the priest and said, “But the buddha within me was feeling very cold. So it was a question whether to sacrifice the living Buddha to the wooden one, or to sacrifice the wooden one to the living one. And I decided for life.”

But the priest was so mad with anger, he couldn’t listen to what Ikkyu was saying. He said, “You are a madman. You simply get out of here! You have burned Buddha.”

So Ikkyu started to poke the burned Buddha – ashes were there, the statue was almost completely finished. He started to poke with a stick. The priest asked, “What are you doing?”

He said, “I am trying to find the bones of Buddha.”

So the priest laughed, he said, “You are either a fool or a madman. And you are absolutely mad! You cannot find bones there, because it is just a wooden Buddha.”

Ikkyu laughed, he said, “Then bring the other two. The night is still very cold and the morning is still far away.”

This Ikkyu was a very rare man. He was turned out immediately, out of the temple. In the morning he was sitting just on the side of the street outside the temple – worshipping a milestone, putting flowers, doing his prayers. So the priest said, “You fool! In the night you misbehaved with Buddha. What have you done? You have committed a sin, and now what are you doing with this milestone? This is not a statue.”

Ikkyu said, “When you want to pray, everything is a statue. At that time the buddha within was feeling very cold. At this time the buddha within is feeling very prayerful.”

This man Ikkyu had thousands of disciples all over the country, and he used to wander from one place to another to help disciples. This story is about one of his disciples, Ninakawa. He was just on the verge, almost enlightened. But ’almost enlightened’ means nothing; you can move back, from the last point also you can fall. Unless it has happened, it has not happened. From the very last moment, when only one step remains and you will become an enlightened one, you can come back. This Ninakawa was almost enlightened but still in the grip of the scriptures, because unless you reach to the truth, it is very difficult to get out of the grip of the scriptures.

It is very difficult to get out of the prison of words. It happens only when you are really enlightened. Then you can see that words are just words: nothing is there, they are not substantial, they are made of the stuff dreams are made of. They are just ripples in the mind, nothing else; sounds in the mind. And the meaning? Meaning is given by us; it is not there; no word is meaningful. And any word can become meaningful by common agreement.

So it is just a social phenomenon, not concerned with truth at all. But people live by words: if someone says something against Jesus and you are a Christian you will be ready to kill him, or be ready to be killed – it is a question of life and death. Someone says something against Mohammed, a Mohammedan gets mad. Just a word – ‘Mohammed’ is just a word, ‘Jesus’ is just a word – but people live by words. […]

Have you ever thought, if your scriptures are burned, what will happen to you? If your mottos are burned, what will happen to you? If your words are burned, what will happen to you? You will be in a very sad plight. That’s why, if someone says anything against the Bible, you become mad. It is not because he is saying something against the Bible – he is burning your motto. You depend on the word. And you depend on the word because you don’t know what truth is. If you come to know what truth is you will throw all the words, you will burn all the mottos. […]

This Ninakawa was struggling his whole life, meditating, sitting, using many techniques, trying in every way to become calm and quiet and still; but he was still in the grip of scripture. The day he was dying Ikkyu visited him. That was the moment now to push this man into the infinite abyss. He may miss, because at the time of death, if scripture is there, you will miss.

You need to be totally vacant, you need to be totally empty; only then can you meet death, because death is emptiness. And only the alike can know the alike, the same can understand the same. If you are filled, even with a single word, you will miss, because then the mind is there – and death has no mind, death has no thought; death is simply falling into emptiness.

So Ikkyu came to push this disciple at the last moment. He had been missing his whole life – he should not miss this last moment. And I also tell you: if you miss your whole life, then there is only one possibility and only one hope – at the moment of death. But no need to wait for it, it can happen right now. If it is not happening right now, then go on trying. But get ready for death. If you are ready, I will be there to push you. If you are ready, then it is very easy: just a little jerk, and the mind blows.

Just before Ninakawa passed away the Zen master Ikkyu visited him.

Masters have been visiting always. It may not have actually happened, remember that; it may not have actually happened. It may be, it is possible, that nobody else than Ninakawa saw the master visiting him. It may have actually happened, but that is irrelevant. One thing is certain: that while Ninakawa was dying, just at the last moment the master was there. This dialogue happened with Ninakawa and Ikkyu. There may have been many others there, they may not have heard it at all; they may not have seen Ikkyu coming at all. It was or it was not a physical visit. But it happened, and it did… whatsoever was needed was done.

“Shall I lead you on?” Ikkyu asked. Ninakawa replied . . .

A man of scripture, particularly Buddhist, because in Buddhism the guru is not accepted. Buddha is the greatest guru, but in Buddhism the guru is not accepted. They have a reason for it. Because the human mind is so complex, it creates trouble everywhere: the guru is to liberate you, but you can make a bondage out of him. Hindus have been teaching that without the guru, without the master, there is no liberation. And this is true, absolutely true, but by the time of Buddha it became a bondage.

Without the guru, without the master, there is no liberation. So people started becoming slaves of masters, because without them there is no liberation. Look at the human mind and the stupidity: a master is to liberate, but you can become a slave to the master because only he can liberate; then you can become just docile. Much slavery was created; nobody else on this earth has created such a deep slavery as Hindus. You cannot come across a single revolution in the whole history of Hinduism against the priest. No – the whole thing was so settled and so fixed and systematized, and everybody was aware that if you rebel against the priest there is no liberation – he is the guru, he is the master.

The untouchables – the sudras – have existed in the most miserable condition. They are the greatest of slaves and they have the longest history of slavery, but never have they revolted against it, because it was not possible. The guru, the master, the brahmin – he is the door to the divine. You have missed this life, and if you rebel you miss the other also – so remain a slave.

Then came Buddha, and he said, “No need for the guru” – not because there is no need for the guru: he said no need for the guru, and he meant no need to become a slave – but that was the only way to say it. So Buddha says, “Be a light unto yourself. Nobody is needed to lead you. Nobody is needed to guide you. You are enough unto yourself.”

This is the greatest possibility of being free, of freedom. But you can misuse this also, this is the problem. Then you think that if there is no need for a master, then why listen to the Buddha? If there is no need for the master, then why go to the Buddha? If I am totally independent, then I am Buddha myself. That happened through Buddhism: slavery didn’t happen, but deep egoism happened. But both are the two extremes: either you become an egoist – because no guru, no master, nobody to follow – or you become a slave, because without the guru there is no liberation.

Can’t you be in the middle? Can’t you just stand in the middle without moving to the extreme? If you can be in the middle, the mind disappears.

Ikkyu came, and he said, “Shall I lead you?”

Ikkyu asked the basic Buddhist question, and Ikkyu knows that if he is still burdened with the scripture he will say, “No, who can lead anybody? Nobody is a guru. Every soul is absolutely independent. I am a light unto myself.” If he is burdened with the scripture, this will be the response. If he is not burdened with the scripture, then the response can be any – infinite possibilities open.

Ninakawa replied, “I came here alone . . .” ‘This is what Buddha says “. . . I go alone. What help could you be to me?”

Everybody is born alone, goes alone; and in the middle of these two, coming and going, you may delude yourself that you are with somebody, but you still remain alone. Because if you are in the beginning alone and in the end alone, how in the middle can you be with somebody? The wife, the husband, the friend, the society, are all illusions. You remain alone, aloneness is your nature. You can be deluded, that’s all. You can have dreams, that’s all, but the other remains always the other and there is no meeting point. This is the basic Buddhist teaching to make man free.

That’s why Buddha even denied God, because if there is God how can you be alone? He is always there. Even when you are in your bathroom he is there – because he is omnipotent, omnipresent. You cannot escape him; wherever you go he will be there. He is the cosmic eye, the cosmic spy, following you. Whatsoever you do, he will be looking! It is very difficult to escape God; if he is, then he is everywhere. You cannot hide – this is beautiful if you can understand – and religious people used it to help.

Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, they have all used the omnipresence of God. It is a great help, because if you can really feel God following you like a shadow everywhere, you will become very, very much alert and aware – because he is there. You are not alone, you cannot relax into sin, you cannot relax into ignorance, sleepiness – he is there. The presence will make you alert.

This is the right use. But otherwise, the presence can become a bondage, a heavy burden, anxiety. […]

This can become a deep anxiety, a neurosis; this can create guilt, and then you have missed. And remember: every key that can open a door can destroy the lock also if you use it wrongly. There is a way, a right way to use a key; only then it opens the lock. If you use it wrongly, the lock may be destroyed. And as the mind is, it always uses keys in a wrong way. Then somebody is needed who must say to you, “Throw this key, because this key is now useless. This is only destroying the lock, not helping you in any way.”

Buddha said no guru is needed – because in his time the guru meant the brahmin. Krishnamurti is saying the same thing: no guru is needed. But there is another possibility – it may give you freedom. If it gives you freedom it is perfectly okay. But it may give you egoism and that’s the problem, there is the rub. If it gives you egoism, you may not become a slave to somebody else, but you have become a slave to your own ego. And remember, nobody can be such a dangerous master as your ego can be. Nobody can make you so blind as your ego can make you. Nobody can lead you to such hells as your ego can lead you.

Ikkyu just wanted to know whether this man is still clinging to the scriptures, or he has come to understand Buddha. Understanding is different, clinging is different. Clinging is to the dead letter. If he has understood, then Buddha is the greatest master. If he has not understood, then he will not allow; even at the point of death, he will cling to the scriptures.

Ikkyu was standing there, and was asking, “Can I lead you? Shall I lead you on? . . . Because the path is unknown. You have never been through it; I have been along it. I know how to die; I know how to celebrate death. I know how to lose yourself into death, and then you never lose; then the real self is born for the first time. I know the secret of dying and rebirth. Can I lead you on?”

Ninakawa replied – he refused – he said: “I came here alone, and I go alone. What help could you be to me?”

And he was in need of help. If he was not in need of help, he would have simply laughed, smiled; he would have said, “Thank you.” There was no need to use these words from the scriptures. Why do you use scriptures? They are rationalizations. Whenever you are uncertain you use the scripture, because the scripture is very certain. Whenever you are in doubt, you use Buddha, Krishna, Christ, because they can hide your hesitation, they can hide your reality, they can give you a false confidence.

Whenever you are using others’ words you are hiding your ignorance. This man was not saying, “I came here alone” – this was not his experience. He was not saying “… And I go alone.” He was repeating words, and you cannot deceive a master with words.

Ikkyu answered, “If you think you really come and go . . .”

These are the most beautiful words ever uttered – the essence of all the Upanishads, the essence of all Buddhas and Mahaviras, just in one sentence.

“If you think you really come and go, that is your delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and no going.”

This is really very difficult and subtle.

Says Ikkyu, “If you think you really come and go, then the ego is there. Who comes? Who goes? If you think you come and go, you don’t know; then you are simply repeating Buddha’s words” – there is the catch.

If you have come to know that “I come alone, and I go alone,” then there is no coming and no going, because the soul is never born, never dies. Life is an eternal continuum. It continues. It never comes, never goes. This body may have been born, this body may die – but that life, the energy, the self, the soul, or whatsoever you call the consciousness that exists in this body, has never been born and will not die. That consciousness is continuous. There has never been any break in it.

If you really know, then you know that there is no coming, no going. Who comes? Who goes? If you don’t understand, if you have not realized this, then you will say, “I come alone.” But then this ‘I’ is the ego; then this ’I’ is not the self. When you say, “I go alone,” the emphasis is on ‘I’ – and the ‘I’ is the bondage. If there is no ‘I’, suddenly you will see that you have never been born and are never going to die; then there is no beginning and no end.

Says Jesus . . . somebody asked Jesus, “Are you the Messiah we have been waiting for? Who are you? Tell us about you.”

Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Abraham must have been thousands of years before, and Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” The sentence is really very absurd, logically absurd, grammatically wrong: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Abraham is in the past; Jesus says, “Before he was…” and Abraham is the first prophet. There is every possibility that Abraham is just a changed name of Ram, because in old Hebrew it is not Abraham, it is Abram. And Ab simply means respect, just like Shree Ram; it is just to pay respect.

There is every possibility that Abraham is no one else than Ram.

Says Jesus, “Before Abraham was, I am.” For Abraham he uses the past tense: he has been and is no more; the manifestation was there and now is no more. But “I am,” because “I am always: I was, I am here, I will be.”

The innermost consciousness knows no birth, no death; knows no past, no present, no future; knows no time. It is eternal, and eternity is not part of time.

Said Ikkyu, “If you think you really come and go – if you think that there is a coming and going – You are in delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and going.”

What have buddhas been doing? They have simply been showing you that you are perfect – as you are. No change is needed. You have not to go anywhere, you have not to move a single inch. As you are, you are in your perfect glory, here and now. There is no coming and no going. Just become aware of the phenomenon that you are. Just become aware who you are! Just be alert! And then nothing is to be achieved, no effort is to be made, because from the very beginning, before Abraham was, you are. You have seen the creation of the world, you will see the end of the world, but there is no beginning to you and no end to you.

You are the witness, and the witness cannot have any beginning and cannot have any end. If you had been alert, you would have seen your own birth. If you can die consciously, you will see that death is happening in the body and you are just an onlooker. So the body dies, and you are just the witness. And if you can be a witness in the death, then in the next life, in the birth, you will be a witness. You will see that the mind is choosing a womb: hovering all around the earth, finding a woman, a couple, making love – you will see it.

Just as if you are hungry: you go to the market, and you can be a witness that your eyes, your mind is looking at the hotels, restaurants, to find the right place where you can have your food. You are hungry, but if you get too identified with the hunger then you cannot be a witness. Otherwise, hunger is there, but you are not the hunger. How can you be the hunger? – otherwise who will know that you are hungry?

Hunger, to be known, needs someone else beyond the hunger who can look and see, who can become alert. If you can become alert in hunger, then you can see how your mind is searching for a right place to have your food. The same happens after death: your mind is in search of a right womb. You choose, you see what is happening.

If you are in search of a particular womb, if you are a very good soul or a very bad soul, then you may take many years to find a right womb – very difficult. If you are just an ordinary person, just normal, nothing special good or bad, neither a Hitler nor a Gandhi, then you can be born immediately; there is no need, because everywhere ordinary, normal, standard wombs are available. Then, this moment you die and the next moment you are born – not even a single moment is lost. […]

If you die consciously and are born consciously you will know that there is no birth and no death, only a body has been chosen. You remain the same, only the house changes. If you change your old clothes, do you say this is a new birth, I am born? No, because you have only changed the clothes; you remain the same.

This is how one who becomes alert comes to know that all changes are just changes of dresses and houses and places, situations, circumstances, but you remain the same; the center never changes, it is eternal.

Says Ikkyu, “If you think you really come and go that is your delusion. Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and going.”

What is that path? Is there really a path? Because we have to use language, that’s why he says ‘path’. Otherwise, there is no path, because a path always leads somewhere. No path can lead to you because you are already there. If you want to come to me there is a path, has to be. If you come to somebody you have to follow a path, go through a passage, a bridge, something or other – because you are moving outward. But if you want to go inward there is no path. You are already there. A sudden jerk is needed and you simply feel that you are there.

It is just like when you dream in the night: you fall into sleep in Poona, and in the dream, you are back at your London home, or in New York, or in Calcutta, or in Tokyo, and in the dream, you completely forget that you are in Poona. Then what is needed? Just a jerk. Somebody comes and wakes you up. Will you wake up in London, Tokyo, New York, or in Poona? It would have been very difficult, it will create a very absurd world, if you are dreaming of New York and suddenly somebody wakes you and you wake up in New York! Then this world would have been a nightmare. But you wake up in Poona; the dream disappears.

Buddhas have been teaching this: that there is no need to go anywhere, because you are already there where you want to go; but you are in a dream. Only in a dream have you moved from the center – you cannot move from there. You are there. For millions of lives, you may have been dreaming, but you have not moved from the center where you are. Nobody can move. Just a jerk, just somebody to shock you . . . you become alert and suddenly the dream disappears. The dreamland and New York and London, they disappear, and you are here and now.

This jerk, this shock can be given very easily at the moment of death – because the whole body-mind is going through a great change. Everything is in chaos. In a chaos you can be made alert more easily because everything is uncomfortable. When everything is comfortable it is difficult to bring a man out of the dream – nobody really wants to come out of a comfortable dream. Only when the dream becomes a nightmare, then you scream. […]

Dreams are effective, they go deep, because in an unconscious mind the distinction is really very vague; what is dream and what is real is very vague. They are mixed, the boundaries are not so clear-cut, the boundaries are blurred.

Have you seen a child waking, and weeping because he has lost a toy he saw in the dream? “I am looking around for the toy – where has the toy disappeared to?”

But this child never dies in you. It dies only when you make much effort to become alert; only then the dream and the reality become clear-cut distinctions. And once the vagueness is lost, once the boundaries are not blurred, once you become aware what is dream, what is reality, the dream stops – because then the dream cannot continue. If you have become aware the dream cannot continue. Even in a dream, if you become aware that this is a dream, the dream will stop immediately.

So you never become aware in a dream that this is a dream, you always feel this is real. For anything to continue, your feeling is needed that this is real. You give reality through the feeling. If you withdraw the feeling, the dream disappears and only the reality remains.

It is a dream that you are in this world, and it is the reality that you exist in the divine. It is a dream that you are in the market; it is the reality that you have never moved from the very center of existence, from God. It is a dream you have moved in the market – and a dream can continue, there is no time limit. If you think you are the body, this is a dream – you have never been a body. If you think you are born and you die, this is a dream – you have never been born and you can never die; that is impossible.

Said Ikkyu, “This is your delusion if you say, ‘I come and I go.’ There is no one to come and no one to go. And there is no place to come to and no place to go to. Let me show you the pathless path. Because then there can be no path – because if there is no one to come and no one to go, no place to come to and no place to go to, then how can the path exist? So let me show you the pathless path on which there is no coming and no going.”

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.

It happened! You have heard the words – but you are not Ninakawa, you are not that ready, you are not on your deathbed – that’s the problem. You are still hoping for something in life, your dream still has much meaning for you, you have investments in your dream. You may have a desire to come out of the dream, but this desire is only half-hearted. The other part goes on saying, “Dream it a little more, it is so beautiful.” […]

You may be having nightmares; in those moments you feel, “How to drop out of the dream?” – but you have beautiful dreams also; not only hellish dreams, you have heavenly dreams. And that’s the problem: unless you become aware that even a heavenly dream is a dream and useless, you are not on the deathbed. Your desire continues, you go on watering the world of dreams, feeding it, helping it to grow.

Ninakawa was on his deathbed, he was dying, there was no future left. He was in a chaos. The whole system, the whole adjustment of body, mind and soul was getting looser and looser. Things were falling apart; he was not together. The nightmare was intense, because it is most intense in death. He was simply miserable in that moment: death and no future.

If there is no future you cannot dream, because dreams need space, time to move. That’s why death looks so dangerous, because it allows no time to think. You cannot hope, because there is no tomorrow. Death does not kill you, it simply kills the tomorrow, and tomorrow has been your very existence. You have never lived today; you have been always postponing for tomorrow. And death kills the tomorrow, it simply burns your calendar – suddenly the clock stops, time doesn’t move.

Without time what can you do? How can the mind think, desire, dream? Death closes the door – that is the fear.

Why does death make you so afraid and trembling and scared? Because there seems to be no beyond, no possibility to escape from it. You cannot do anything because you cannot think, and you know only one thing: thinking, nothing else. Your whole life has been a thinking. Now, death allows no thinking. Only a man who has been meditating and has realized no-thinking before death will not be afraid – because he knows that thinking is not life.

And he knows a different plenum of existence. He knows the depth, not the length of existence. He is not moving from this moment to that, he is not moving from today to tomorrow. He is moving in this moment, deeper and deeper and deeper; in today, deeper and deeper and deeper. He is moving here and now, in the depth.

You touch this moment, and you move to another moment; you have a horizontal movement: from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. And a man who meditates goes on moving from A1 to A2 to A3 – in the depth – not to B. He has no tomorrow. This here and now is the only existence, then how can there be death for him? This moment you are alive; only in the next moment can you die. This moment no one has ever died. This moment you are alive, and this man who meditates moves into this moment – how can he die?

Death will happen on the periphery; he will come to know about it. It will be just as you come to know about a neighbor who is dead: he will come to know about it, that the body is dead – this will be news. He may even feel sorry for the body, but he is not dying.

Ninakawa was a meditator just on the verge of enlightenment, still clinging. You can take a jump into the abyss, but still you can cling to a creeper – and you can go on clinging, afraid. You are almost in the abyss, sooner or later you will fall, but still for a moment more the mind says, “Cling!” He was clinging to the scriptures, to the buddhas, to the words, the doctrines. He was still repeating knowledge. Just a creeper – sooner or later he will have to leave this, because when life leaves you, how can words be retained? They will leave you.

With this, Ikkyu’s revelation, he understood, he left the clinging. He smiled and passed away.

You never smile. Either you weep or you laugh, but you never smile. A smile is just in the middle, it is difficult for you. Either you weep or you laugh – they are the possibilities, the two extremes. Try to find out what this phenomenon of a smile is.

Only a buddha smiles, because it is just in the middle. A smile has both a sadness in it, the sadness of the tears, and the happiness of laughter. A smile has both. Smiling is never simple laughter: it has the expansion of laughter and the depth of sadness – it is both. Look at Buddha, meditate on him, and you will see in his face both a sadness and a happiness; a blissful flowing of his being and still a deep sadness.

With these two chemicals, so to say, a smile is created. When you feel sad for everybody, when you feel sad for the whole existence because they are unnecessarily suffering…. You cannot imagine the sadness of a buddha, it is difficult for you. You only think that a buddha is happy. He is happy as far as he himself is concerned, but for you? You cannot conceive his difficulty – because he sees you, and you are unnecessarily suffering, and nothing can be done, you cannot be helped. A disease that is not there – and incurable! And he knows that just by the corner, just a turn of your being, and everything will be solved. But you will not take that turn. You will jump and you will do many things, but you will always miss that turn. You will grope in the dark, but somehow, miraculously, you always miss the door. You know how to miss the door; you are perfect in that: how to miss the door and always go on groping.

A buddha is in difficulty because he has realized something which is there with you already. The same blissful existence, the same beauty, the same ecstasy that he has, you have. And you go on crying, and you go on beating your chest, and you are in such a suffering – and nothing can be done. A sadness…

It is said about Buddha that when he reached the door – the final door beyond which there is no door, and you cannot come back; that is the ultimate – when he reached the door of nirvana, the door was opened for him and there was welcome. Because once in millions of years somebody reaches to the ultimate. But he turned his back towards the door and looked at the world – and they say he is still standing there; he has not entered.

The doorkeeper asked, “What are you doing? You have been endeavoring for this for many, many lives. Now the door is open, come in.”

And Buddha said, “Unless everybody who is suffering out there enters, I cannot enter. I will be the last to enter.” This is the sadness.

The story is really beautiful. Nobody can stand at that ultimate door, that’s true; there is no door like that and no doorkeeper. You fall, and there is no way to stop yourself. The story is beautiful; that shows in a symbolic way the consciousness of a buddha – the trouble, his anguish, his suffering. It is not his suffering now; it is the suffering of others that makes him sad.

It is as if you have awakened but everybody else is fast asleep, and they are dreaming and dreaming nightmares – screaming, jumping, crying, weeping, and you know that these are just nightmares, but these people are so drunk and so fast asleep, you cannot help. If you try to wake them up they become angry. They say, “Why are you disturbing our sleep? Who are you?” You cannot wake them, and you have to see their suffering, and suffer it.

Buddha is sad – for you. Buddha laughs deeply, his whole being is filled with laughter – just like a tree has come to flower, everything has become a dance. And these both meet in him: the laughter that bubbles and goes on coming out – and still he cannot laugh because of you – and the sadness that you create. They both meet and the meeting creates a smile. A smile is both laughter and tears.

You cannot smile – you can laugh, you can weep. When you weep, how can you laugh? Because in weeping it is always for yourself; it is a single element. When you laugh, you laugh; how can you weep? – because laughing is for yourself. In Buddha, the ego has disappeared, now he is no more, the meeting has happened with the all. Two elements meet: his consciousness which has become perfect, and all around millions of consciousnesses which are perfect, suffering – unnecessarily suffering, suffering without any cause – these two meet, and a sad and yet happy smile comes to his face.

He cannot weep because what you are doing is so foolish. He cannot laugh because that will be too hard on you. At the most he can smile. This happened, so a smile has become a symbol of one who has become enlightened.

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.

Then it was not a death, but just a passing – passing to another world, a passing to another birth; then nobody was dying. And if you can die with a smile, you know the art of dying, and the whole of religion consists in the art of dying, nothing else than that.

Now I will repeat the first story we started, so that you don’t forget it: forgetfulness is a trick.

These ten days we have been talking about No Water, No Moon. It will remain just a talk – words and words and words – if you are not ready to die. Be on your deathbed! Be a Ninakawa! Then these words are so clear, as Ikkyu’s never were. I tell you: these words are as clear as Ikkyu’s never were. You can also smile and pass away – remember:

The nun Chiyono studied for years but was unable to find enlightenment. One night, she was carrying an old pail filled with water. As she was walking along, she was watching the full moon reflected in the pail of water. Suddenly, the bamboo strips that held the pail together broke, and the pail fell apart. The water rushed out, the moon’s reflection disappeared – and Chiyono became enlightened. Afterwards, she wrote this poem:

This way and that way,
I tried to keep the pail together,
Hoping the weak bamboo
Would never break.

Suddenly the bottom fell out.
No more water;
No more reflection of the full moon
In the water–
Emptiness in my hand.

Go with emptiness in your hand, because that’s all . . . that’s all I can offer to you, and nothing is greater than that. This is my gift: go with emptiness in your hand. If you can carry emptiness in your hand, then everything becomes possible. Don’t carry possessions, don’t carry knowledge, don’t carry anything that fills the pot and becomes the water, because then you will be seeing only the reflection. In wealth, in possessions, in houses, in cars, in prestige, you will see only the reflection of the full moon. And the full moon is there waiting for you.

Let the bottom drop! Don’t try this way and that way to protect the old pail. It is not worth it. Don’t protect yourself, it is not worth it. Let the pail break down, let the water flow, let the moon in the water disappear, because only then will you be able to raise your eyes towards the real moon. It is always there in the sky – but emptiness in the hand is needed. Remain more and more empty, think yourself more and more empty, behave more and more as if you are empty. By and by, by and by, you will have the taste of it. And once the taste comes, it is so beautiful.

Once you know the taste of emptiness, you have known the very meaning of life. Carry emptiness, drop the pail of water which is your ego, your mind and your thoughts, and remember: no water, no moon – emptiness in the hand.

-Osho

From No Water, No Moon, Discourse #10

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It Remains in its Suchness – Osho

The yogi, being alone and indifferent like the sky, does not even in the least attach himself with the future.

Even as the ether inside a wine jar remains untouched by the smell of wine, so the self, even in association with its covering, remains uncontaminated by its nature.

As the arrow aimed at its target cannot but hit it after it has left the bow, so the karmas performed before the advent of knowledge will yield its fruit, even after one has attained knowledge. It implies that the fruits of karma done before realization have to be lived out.

As the arrow shot at a tiger cannot be stopped upon learning that it is a cow and not a tiger but rather goes forth and hits its object just as forcefully.

So the action performed yields its fruits even after knowledge has been attained. One who knows his self as ever young and deathless also remains so.

How could he even have an imagination of the bondage due to past conditions? It means that there is no relationship between the sage and his past conditionings.

-Adhyatma Upanishad

Some very significant and beautiful definitions about the ultimate experience . . .

The first thing to know about the ultimate experience is that it cannot be called an experience, because experience implies the experiencer and the experienced – the subject and the object. But the ultimate experience is absolutely undifferentiated, undivided. The experiencer is the experienced, the observer is the observed, the knower is the known, the lover is the beloved – there are not two; only one remains.

About this one who remains, this sutra says that one is like space, like sky – vacant, empty, yet full, fulfilled; yet whole.

Look at the sky: Sky is just emptiness, but everything exists in the sky. It cannot exist otherwise because to exist you need space, emptiness. So emptiness surrounds the whole existence. Existence comes out of this emptiness and again drops this emptiness – and this emptiness remains untouched, unaffected.

Observe the sky in the rainy days: Clouds come; the whole sky just disappears behind the clouds. You cannot even imagine where the sky has gone. It has gone nowhere; the clouds will rain and disappear, and the same sky will be there. It was always there; even when there were clouds the sky was there in its total emptiness. Clouds cannot disturb it, and clouds cannot affect it – they come and go and the sky remains the same.

It remains in its suchness, in its tathata.

This word “suchness” is to be understood deeply. What do I mean when I say the sky remains in its suchness? It remains in its nature, unchanged by anything that happens in it. It is just like a mirror: The mirror remains untouched in its suchness, in its mirroring – fresh, young, never old. Whatsoever happens before the mirror, whatsoever is reflected in the mirror, comes and goes; the mirror remains unscarred, the mirror remains eternally virgin. This is what is meant by sky. Sky is the eternal virgin. The virginity is never broken, the sky remains unmarried to anything, untouched. Everything happens in it and yet nothing happens to it.

The same sky is within you also. Without, there is space; within also, there is space. Space is everywhere. The space within is known as your self, and the space without is known as the supreme self. The body is just a material barrier – and it is porous, so the outer sky goes on coming in and the inner sky goes on coming out. There is a constant meeting. Your body is just like an earthen pot, porous. You have an earthen pot of the body, it divides, but it cannot divide totally; the space is not broken by it.

To know this inner space is the ultimate experience, because once you know this inner space you have known all; the quality of the inner space is the quality of the outer space. Inner and outer are not really two things; inner and outer are just two terms – because of this earthen pot, this body, we call it the inner space and the outer space. When the body drops, the inner becomes the outer and the outer becomes the inner; they become one.

In and out are false terms. You can put an earthen pot in the ocean; then the ocean is divided by the earthen pot – the ocean without, and the ocean within. But the earthen pot is porous, and some drops will escape from the within to the without, and some drops will go on coming in, from the without to the within. But then the earthen pot melts, and drops, and in and out become one.

When one comes to know this inner space as just an extension of the outer space – or vice versa: when one comes to know this outer space as just as an extension of the inner space, then inner and outer become meaningless. They are.

To know this while in the body is called the state of jivanmukta – while the body is there, the earthen pot is there, you have realized the inner space and the quality of space. Now there is no inner and outer. Of course the body is there, but now you know that the body never divides – the division is false. But the body will continue for a while . . .

The Upanishads say that even when you become a knower of the inner, a knower of the space – and you have come to realize that nothing can disturb you, nothing can scar you, nothing can touch you, your virginity is absolute – even then your past karmas will continue to have their effects. The body will continue; the body will continue to feel pleasure and pain, the body will become old, diseased, the body will die – this will continue.

Knowledge of the inner self is not the cessation of all karmas. The past karmas will drop only when they have reached their target. But now, no new karmas will be accumulated. When you attain to this knowing, past karmas will continue for a while, unless and until their momentum is finished – but new karmas will not be accumulated. And secondly, while these old karmas are going on in their continuity, you will know that they are not related to you. You will remain in your unrelatedness.

So a jivanmukta never says, “This is my body.” He says, “This is my past karma’s body.” He never says, “I am ill and I am suffering.” He only says, “This is a long procession of karmas and their effect; my past karmas reaching to their target – past reaching into the future. I am just a witness to it, unrelated.” Because of this, because of this experience, observation, this realization that all the past karmas of all the past millions of lives have not affected my inner space – it has remained pure, crystal pure, innocent – this realization means cessation of the future.

Then you cannot long for happiness, you cannot long for success, you cannot long for riches, this or that. You cannot be for and against – this should be and this should not be – because now you know that nothing has ever happened to you, and nothing can happen to you. This knowing that the past has been absolutely futile to you – you have been just space, just like sky – like space, you have remained pure, simple, innocent . . . the future drops.

The future is just the past reflected again and again. Desiring something which was pleasant in the past, not desiring something which was unpleasant in the past, is the projection of the future. The future is just the past reflected again and again – modified, a little bit of change here and there, rearranged, re-structured, but all the elements belong to the past.

When the past appears unrelated to you, and you appear just like empty space . . . clouds have come and gone, lives have come and gone; birth, death, you were this and that – a beggar in one life, an emperor in another, unsuccessful in one, successful in another, educated, uneducated, good and bad, sometimes a thief and sometimes a saint – everything has come and gone, and the inner point has remained untouched. Nothing has happened to it; everything happened around it, near it, in the vicinity, but nothing has happened to it itself – knowing this, the whole future drops completely. Now you cannot project the whole nonsense that you were projecting in the past. Future drops. With future, time drops. With time, cessation of time – you enter the eternal.

But the past will have its fulfillment. Now you can watch the past moving into the future without you. You remain in the present; the past goes on moving into the future until the whole momentum gained in the past is finished.

A jivanmukta means one who has attained to the inner sky, inner space, but still he will have to live in the body. He will have to be a witness to all the past karmas and their consequences. When all the consequences are finished, and the past karmas have dropped, the body will drop. Then a jivanmukta becomes a mukta; then moksha, total freedom is attained.

A jivanmukta attains freedom from the past, freedom from the future – but he cannot attain freedom from the consequences of the past. They will have to be fulfilled . . . but he remains a witness.

One who knows his self as ever-young and deathless also remains so.

How could he even have an imagination of the bondage due to past conditions? It means that there is no relationship between the sage and his past conditionings.

The conditionings go on flowing but there is no relationship; you remain a witness.

If you can become a witness this very moment, you are severed from you past and from your future. Then the mechanism goes on moving, just like you are on a bicycle pedaling. You stop pedaling but the cycle will have some movement still, because of the momentum of the past. You are not pedaling it, but it is not going to stop just now. It will move into the future without you pedaling it. It will go a little while and then it will drop.

The same happens with your body, your mind. It is just a cycle, just a mechanism. It will move, but without you it cannot move far. Unless it is fed continually, fueled continually, it cannot move very far; it will drop.

Buddha was dying. Ananda asked him, “Cannot you be with us a little more? Cannot we have you a little more? I have not yet attained and you are dying, and you are leaving us.” Buddha had said that morning that he was going to die. “So if you have to ask anything,” he had told his disciples, “you can ask. This is my last day. This evening will not come for me. This morning is the last; in the noontime I will drop. When the sun comes to its peak, I will drop.”

So his disciples gathered and they began to weep and cry. And Ananda asked him, “Cannot you stay a little while more?” Buddha said, “That is impossible, because all the past karmas are finished. This is the last day, the last momentum; I feel it can last up to noon. The energy is gone, everything has ceased, and now the mechanism is just going to stop. And nothing can be done, because as far as I am concerned, I stopped pedaling long before – forty years.

Really, I have been dead for forty years as far as I am concerned. I have not been in the body for these forty years; it was only for you that it has appeared I have been in this body. For me, I have been beyond; I have gone out of it long before. But the body had to continue, and now this is impossible. The momentum is just in its last flicker, the flame is just about to go, the oil is completely finished. And I cannot pour more oil into it because the man who could pour is dead for forty years – who could pour more oil into it? So ask, don’t wait. The noon is coming soon – if you have anything to ask, you can ask. The noon is coming very soon.”

This happens – Buddha was a jivanmukta for forty years. A jivanmukta means one who is already dead – of course, the body is alive, and then moksha is attained and body also falls.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #48.

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

The Essence of Buddha Dharma – Osho

What is the essence of Buddha Dharma – the religion of the Buddha?

Mouna,

Yoka says:

If you reach the Zen of Buddha, at that very moment you accomplish everything.

In your dream there are many pathways, but when you wake up, they are reduced to nothing. Neither error, nor happiness, nor loss, nor gain.

Do not try to find anything in the essence of your being. It is a long time since you wiped the dust from your mirror, now it is time for you to see its brilliancy perfectly.

Who can not-think, all is his. If you practice charity in order to become Buddha when will you succeed? Never – a thousand times never.

Drink and eat according to your true nature. All things in the universe are impermanent, and therefore all existence is void. That is the whole understanding of Buddha.

This is the essence of Buddha Dharma, the religion of the Buddha. First: it is not a philosophy that you can understand intellectually; you have to become a Buddha to know it. Hence Yoka says:

If you reach the Zen of Buddha – the state of the Buddha – at that very moment you accomplish everything.

Nothing is missing when you reach the ultimate state of awakening; all is fulfilled, you are utterly contented. Life is known for the first time as a great significance, as a great dance, a celebration. Life is known for the first time as absolutely perfect. There is no complaint, no desire, no hankering for things to be other than they are. One is simply contented, totally contented. All desiring disappears.

And what is the state of Buddha? What is this “Zen of Buddha” Yoka is talking about? It is the state of no-mind. Hence Yoka says:

Who can not-think, all is his.

The greatest thing in life to experience is a state of no-thought. The greatest art of life is to be able to be without mind. Even if it happens for a single moment – just a glimpse – you have reached the beyond and you have crossed the point of no-return.

Don’t go on thinking about it – what it is. By thinking you will go on missing it. Thinking is the sure way of missing the Buddha Dharma; non-thinking is the way to achieve it. It is your own nature!

Buddha does not talk about some great mysteries, hidden secrets, esoteric knowledge. He does not believe in mythology; he is not an occultist. He is a very simple man, very ordinary. He believes in the ordinary existence. He says your day-to-day life is all there is. If you can live it joyfully, silently, understandingly, watchfully, there is nothing else to be done. Your very ordinary life starts becoming extraordinary.

Drink and eat according to your true nature.

Just remember: don’t distort your nature, remain true to your nature. Listen to your own nature and follow it. Don’t follow anybody else.

Buddha says, “Even if you meet me on the way, kill me immediately.” He is saying: Don’t follow me, just take the hints. Try to understand, imbibe the spirit. Feel my presence and then go on your way. Live according to your own light, howsoever small it is; but if it is yours and you live according to it, it will go on growing.

Buddha says, “Be a light unto yourself.” That is his greatest message. Nobody else in the whole world, in the whole history of humanity, has been so respectful toward others as Gautam the Buddha. “Be a light unto yourself.”

Buddhas only point the way – fingers pointing to the moon. You have to follow, and you have to follow according to your nature. You have to be silent, quiet, so you can listen to the still small voice within you, and then follow it. Wherever it leads it is good. Go in deep trust, following your own voice. Be spontaneous, natural, ordinary. This is the way of being extraordinary. Be ordinary but aware, and the ordinary becomes the sacred.

All things in the universe are impermanent . . .

So don’t be worried. All things are impermanent: pleasure and pain, friendship and enmity, poverty and richness, success and failure, birth and death. All is in a flux, all is impermanent, so why be worried? Everything goes on changing. Don’t cling – clinging brings misery, clinging shows your misunderstanding. The moment you cling to something, you are living with the idea that it can be permanent. Nothing can be permanent, and nothing can be done about it. It is just the nature of things to be impermanent.

You are trying to catch hold of rainbows. They are beautiful, but you cannot catch hold of them – one moment they are there and another moment they are gone. So don’t cling to anything because everything is impermanent. And don’t desire anything because even if you get it, you will lose it. If you don’t get it, you will be frustrated. If you get it and lose it, you will be frustrated. Either way you will be in misery, you are inviting misery. So don’t desire anything and don’t cling to anything.

Whatsoever comes, accept it. Buddha calls it tathata, suchness. Just accept it, live through it silently, without being disturbed by it. Misery comes, it will go. Happiness comes, it will go. Everything passes away, nothing abides, so there is nothing to worry about.

Go on passing through all kinds of experiences, and then you will know that one can pass through the world uncontaminated, uncorrupted. One can live in the palaces without clinging, then he is a sannyasin; and one can live in a hut and can cling to the hut, then he is not a sannyasin.

That’s why I don’t tell you to renounce the world, I simply say: “Be watchful.” That is the essence of Buddha’s message.

People ask me, “But Buddha renounced the world. Why did he renounce?” He renounced when he was not a Buddha. He renounced when he was as ignorant as anybody else. He renounced in ignorance.

When he attained the truth, when he experienced the truth and came back home, his wife asked him only one question. “Just tell me one thing,” she asked. “Whatsoever you have attained . . . I can see you are a transformed being. You have become luminous; you are no longer the same person. The old is gone, you are reborn. It is so clear to me – even a blind person like me can see it. But just answer me one question. Whatsoever you have attained, was it not possible to attain it living here with me in this palace?”

And the story is: Buddha remained silent, looking downwards. The wife was right. He didn’t say anything.

In the East, not saying anything is thought to be a sign of agreement: Mounam sammati lakshanam. “To be silent means I agree with you.” It says more than Buddha saying yes. His silence says more, it is more pregnant with meaning.

He immediately felt it: “She is right.” Whatsoever he had attained could have been attained anywhere. There was no need to go into the jungle.

There is no need for you to go anywhere. Wherever you are you can assert your Buddhahood, you can become awakened.

The essence is to slip out of the mind, to get out of the mind. The mind is the world. The mind is full of desires, full of clingings, attachments, longings. Get out of the mind! Create a little distance between you and the mind. Be a watcher, a watcher on the hills, and you will be surprised: as you watch the mind, the distance becomes bigger and bigger. As you watch the mind, as you become more and more established in watching, the mind recedes farther and farther away. One day it happens: you cannot hear the chatter of the mind; it is no longer there. It is simply, absolutely silent. In that silence, truth descends in you. In that silence, you encounter yourself, you encounter your innermost core. And that is the innermost core of the whole existence. Your being is the being of all.

We are separate as minds, as bodies, but not as consciousness. In consciousness we meet, we are one. That consciousness is God. That meeting, that oneness where all differences dissolve, where we are no longer separate ice cubes, where we have melted and disappeared into the universal, Buddha calls nirvana. The word is beautiful; it means cessation of the ego. When the ego ceases you are God, you are a Buddha, you are a Christ. It is the ego that is giving you a limitation. It is the ego that is making you live in a prison. Get out of the ego! And nobody is preventing you – it is your own clinging; it is your own attachment. You have become too attached to your chains; you have become too attached to your prison cell. You think it is your home, and it is not. Come out of it! Wake up!

To be awake is to be a Buddha. And Yoka is right.

If you reach the Zen of Buddha – the state of Buddha – at that very moment you accomplish everything.

-Osho

Excerpt from Walking in Zen, Sitting in Zen, Discourse #3, Q2

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Will, Witnessing and Suchness – Osho

You have talked about how the subtle body can be separated from the physical body using one’s willpower. Can the subtle body of a seeker who follows the discipline of witnessing, or that of a seeker who follows the discipline of tathata, suchness, be separated without exercising the will?

To follow the discipline of witnessing requires a great resolve. Following the discipline of tathata requires even greater resolve. It is the greatest resolution ever. When a man determines to live like a witness, that in itself is a great resolution. For example, a man decides he will not eat. He resolves to remain hungry for the day. Another man decides he will eat, but instead of watching himself eat, he will eat watchfully. This is a more difficult resolution.

It is not too difficult to give up food. The truth is, for those who have plenty to eat, it is easy to go without food for a day or two. That’s why in an affluent society the cults of dieting and fasting become popular. For example, in America the idea of dieting has become very popular. People immediately become attracted to naturopathy.

When people have enough to eat, the idea of fasting once in a while appeals to them. It seems to make one feel lighter and more cheerful. In fact in a poor society, staying hungry may be a kind of use of one’s willpower. But in an affluent society it’s a matter of convenience. Actually, if food becomes sufficiently available throughout the world, fasting will turn out to be a necessity for everyone. People will have to remain with empty stomachs once in a while. But witnessing is a very difficult thing.

Let’s understand it this way. For instance, you make a decision that you won’t walk, that you will remain seated in the same chair for eight hours. Now this is not a big thing. You decided not to walk, so you are not walking. Someone else decides he will walk for eight hours — this is not a big thing either, because since he decided to walk, he is walking. But witnessing means you’ll walk, and at the same time you will also know that ‘you’ are not walking. What does witnessing mean? It means you’ll walk as well as know that it is not ‘you’ who is walking — that ‘you’ are simply witnessing the act of walking. This is a much more subtle resolution, a supreme resolution indeed.

Tathata, suchness, is the supreme most resolution; it’s the ultimate resolve. There is no determination higher than this. Even the resolve to enter death voluntarily is not so great a resolve really. Tathata means accepting things as they are. In a way, even the resolve to die voluntarily has its roots somewhere in non-acceptance. That is, we want to know what death is; we want to verify whether death actually occurs or not.

Tathata means, if death appears we will die; if life remains we’ll continue to live. Neither are we concerned with life, nor with death. If darkness falls we’ll stay in the dark; if the light appears we’ll settle with light. If something good comes to us we’ll receive it; if something bad befalls us we’ll bear it. Whatsoever happens, we are willing to accept it — we deny nothing. Let me explain this to you with an example.

Diogenes was passing through a forest. He walked around naked — had a beautiful body. It seems quite possible man must have started wearing clothes in order to cover his ugliness. This seems highly possible. We are always interested in hiding the ugly parts of our body. But this man Diogenes was a very handsome man. He lived naked.

So as he was passing through the forest, four men engaged in the business of capturing and selling slaves saw him. They figured if they could capture this man — good looking, strong, powerful – they may receive a good price for him. But they felt very apprehensive and couldn’t find any way to capture him without risking their lives.

Somehow, they tried and managed to surround him. Diogenes stood in the middle, calm and unperturbed. He asked, “What do you want to do?” The men were very surprised. They took out chains. Diogenes stretched out his hands. Full of fear and with trembling hands, the captors began to chain him.

Diogenes said, “No need to tremble. Come; let me tie the chains for you.” He helped them put on the chains. The men were simply flabbergasted.

After having chained him firmly, they said, “What sort of a man are you? We are putting you in chains and you are helping us! We were afraid this might lead to some fighting and trouble.”

Diogenes said, “You are having fun chaining me, I am having fun in being chained. Where is the need for any trouble? It’s great! Now tell me, where do we go from here?”

The men said, “We feel very embarrassed in telling you that we are in the business of slavery. We’ll now take you to the marketplace and put you up for sale.”

Diogenes said, “Good, let’s go.” He took off with great excitement and began walking even faster than the captors.

They said, “Please slow down a little. What’s the hurry?”

Diogenes said, “Now that we are going to the marketplace, why not reach in time?”

So finally they reached the marketplace. It was very crowded. Those who had come to buy slaves turned their eyes toward Diogenes. They had rarely seen a slave of this quality, because he looked more like an emperor. A huge crowd gathered around him. He was made to stand on the platform where the slaves were auctioned. Raising his voice, the auctioneer said, “Here is a slave for sale. Come forward and name your price.”

Diogenes said, “Shut up, you fool! Ask these men, did I walk in front, or did they? Did they tie the chains on me or did I let them tie the chains on me?”

His captors said, “The man is right. Left to ourselves, we don’t believe we could have captured him. And indeed he walked ahead of us so fast that we could not keep pace with him — we had to practically run behind him. So it is not correct to say we have brought him to the marketplace. The truth is, we have followed him to this place. And it is not right to say we have made him a slave. The fact is, this man agreed lo become a slave, we didn’t make him.”

Diogenes said, “Stop talking nonsense you fools, and let me do my own auctioneering! Besides, this man’s voice is not loud enough, no one will be able to hear him in this large crowd.”

So Diogenes raised his voice and said, “A master has come here for sale. Anyone interested in buying him should come forward.” Someone from the crowd asked, “You call yourself a master?”

Diogenes said, “Yes, I call myself a master. I tied the chains on my own. I have come here on my own, willingly. I stand here for sale of my own free will. And I shall leave whenever I choose to leave. Nothing can happen against my will, because whatsoever happens I make that my will.”

Diogenes is saying, “Whatsoever happens, I make that my will.” This man has indeed attained to tathata, suchness. What it means is: whatever goes on, he is ready for it. He resists nothing at all. In no way can you defeat him, because he will already be a defeated man; you cannot beat him because he will readily allow you to hurt him; you cannot subjugate him because he will readily submit. You can’t do anything to such a man, because no matter what you do, he will not resist. This is indeed a demonstration of a truly supreme resolve.

So tathata is the ultimate will. One who has attained tathata has attained God. Therefore, the question is not whether a seeker who follows the discipline of witnessing, or one who follows the discipline of tathata would attain the same as a seeker who attains by following the discipline of will. It is already attained by him without any problem.

The discipline of will is the most elementary. The discipline of witnessing is of the intermediary kind, and tathata is the ultimate sadhana, the ultimate discipline. So start with the practice of will, take a voyage through witnessing, and reach ultimately to tathata, suchness. There is no conflict among the three.

Please explain the difference between witnessing and tathata.

In witnessing, the duality is present. The witness finds himself separate from that which he experiences.

If a thorn pricks his foot, the witnessing man says, “The thorn has not pricked me, it has pricked my body — I am only the knower of it. The piercing has occurred at one place, while the awareness of it is present somewhere else.”

So in the mind of a witness there exists a duality, a separation between the experiencing of an event and the actual occurrence of it. Therefore, he cannot rise up to the state of advaita, nonduality. And this is why the seeker who stops at the level of being a witness, a watcher, remains confined to a kind of dualism. He ultimately divides the existence into conscious and unconscious. Conscious means the one who knows, and the unconscious means that which is known. So eventually he is bound to end up dividing existence into purusha and prakriti.

Both of these words, purusha and prakriti, are highly significant. Perhaps the true meaning of prakriti may not have occurred to you, prakriti doesn’t mean ‘nature’; in fact, there is no word for prakriti In English. Prakriti means that which was in existence before everything came to be — pra-kriti. Prakriti does not mean srishti or nature, because srishti means that which exists after creation. The word prakriti means that which was before creation.

The word purusha is also very meaningful. The equivalents of such words are extremely difficult to find in any other language of the world, because all these words are born out of very special experiences. You know what pur means; pur means the city. For example, Kanpur, Nagpur. So pur indicates the city, and the one who resides in the city is the purusha. The human body is like a town, a city, and there is someone who resides in it — he is the purusha. Prakriti, therefore, is the pur, and the one who lives in it – – separate, unattached — is the purusha.

So the witness comes as far as the separation of purusha and prakriti. He will set them apart as two entities — the conscious and the unconscious, and a distance will be created between the knower and the known.

Tathata is even more remarkable — the ultimate. Tathata means, there is no duality. There is neither a knower nor is there anything to be known. Or, in other words, the knower is the known. Now it is not that the thorn is hurting me and I am aware of it; or that the thorn and I are separate from each other. It is not even that it would have been better if the thorn had not pierced me, or that it would be good if the thorn came out — no, there is nothing of this sort. Now, everything is accepted: the presence of the thorn, the pricking of it, the awareness of being pricked by it, the experience of pain — everything. And they are different parts of the same thing. Therefore, I am the thorn. I am the very occurrence of pricking. I am the awareness of this occurrence. I myself am the very realization of this all — I am all of this.

That’s why there is no going beyond this ‘I’, my very being. I cannot think, “It would have been better if the thorn had not pricked me” — how can I? For I am the very thorn, the pricking of it, and the knowing of being pricked as well. Nor can I think, “It would be good if the thorn didn’t prick me,” because that would be tantamount to tearing myself apart from my very own being.

Tathata is the ultimate state there is. In that state, whatsoever is, is. It’s a state of the ultimate acceptance of that-which-is. It contains no distinctions. But one cannot reach tathata without having been first a witness. However, one can stop at the level of witnessing, if he so desires, and choose not to arrive at tathata. Similarly, without the use of will, one cannot attain the state of witnessing. Although, having gained willpower, one may wish to stay there and not come to the point of witnessing.

One who stops with attaining firmness of resolve would of course become very powerful, but he won’t be able to attain wisdom. And therefore, the ability to make a resolve can be misused, because wisdom is not required to attain it. One will surely gain a lot of power, but that is precisely why he can abuse it.

The entire black magic is a product of willpower. One who practices it gains a lot of power, but he lacks wisdom totally. He can end up using that power without any discrimination.

A man of will becomes filled with power. It is difficult to predict right away what use he will make of it. He can obviously put it to bad use. Power in itself is neutral. Nevertheless, it is necessary — whether one intends to use it for good or for evil. And as I see it, rather than remaining a weakling, it is better if one uses his power for evil purposes — for the simple reason that one who commits an evil act now may someday use the same power for a good cause. One who cannot do evil can never do good either. That’s why I say it’s better to be powerful than to be impotent and a wimp.

So a man of power can set out on the path of good as well as evil. It is better to follow the course of goodness, because if followed rightly, it will bring you to the state of witnessing. You won’t end up as a witness if you follow the course of evil; rather, you will simply wander around within the confines of your willpower. Then you will get into mesmerism and hypnotism, tantras and mantras, witchcraft and voodooism. All kinds of things will crop up, but they won’t lead you on a journey toward the soul.

This is becoming lost. The power will indeed be there, but gone astray. If the power is put on the course of goodness, it is sure to give rise to the witness within you, and ultimately that power can be used to know and attain oneself. This is what I call the course of goodness. By the course of evil I mean controlling, possessing, enslaving the other. This is what black magic is. Making use of the power for the purpose of attaining oneself, knowing who am I, what am I, and living authentically, is moving in goodness. And it will indeed lead one toward becoming a witness.

If the urge to attain the state of witnessing is satisfied with the knowing of oneself, the seeker reaches up to the fifth body and stops there. However, if the urge is further intensified, one discovers that he is not alone, he contains everything; that the sun and the moon and the stars, the rocks, the soil, the flowers are all part of him; that his very being, his existence incorporates all the rest. If the seeker proceeds with such an intense feeling, he reaches tathata.

Tathata, suchness, is the ultimate flowering of religion, it is the supreme achievement. It is total acceptance. Whatsoever happens, one is open and agreeable to it. Only such an individual can become totally silent, because even a little bit of resentment can prolong the restlessness. One’s restlessness and tension will continue to remain if he carries even a small degree of complaint. Even the slightest idea, “It didn’t happen the way it should have,” and the tension will continue to persist.

The experience of supreme silence, the experience of the greatest freedom from tension, and that of the ultimate liberation is possible only in the state of tathata. However, only a man of will can eventually attain the state of witnessing, and only his going deeper into witnessing can bring him to the state of tathata. One who has not yet known what being a witness means can never know what total acceptance is.

One who hasn’t realized that he is separate from the thorn which is pricking him is not yet ready to know that the thorn is a part of him. In fact, one who comes to experience the separateness of the thorn can take the next step of feeling one with the thorn as well.

So tathata is the fundamental principle. Among all the spiritual disciplines discovered all over the world, tathata is the greatest. That’s why one of Buddha’s names is Tathagat. It would be good to have some understanding of what this word tathagat means. It will be useful in comprehending the meaning of tathata.

Buddha has used the word Tathagat for himself. He would say, for instance, “Tathagat said….” Tathagat means thus came, thus gone. Just as a breeze comes and goes away without any purpose, without any meaning. Just as a breath of air enters your room and goes out — without any reason. So the one whose coming and going away is as unmotivated, as desireless as the breeze, such a being is called Tathagat. But who would come and go like a breeze?

He alone can pass like a breeze who has attained to tathata. Only he to whom the coming and the going makes no difference can move like a breeze. If he needs to come, he comes; if he needs to go, he goes — the same as Diogenes did. It made no difference to him whether people put him in chains or did not put him in chains. Diogenes said later on, “Only one who is prone to be a slave can be nervous about becoming a slave. Since no one can make me a slave, why should I be afraid I might be taken as a slave?

One who carries even the slightest anxiety that he may be turned into a slave, he alone will remain in fear of it. And one who has such a fear is indeed a slave. Since I happen to be the lord and master myself, you can never enslave me. Even in chains, I am the master, and will remain so in your prison as well. It makes no difference where you throw me; I still remain the lord and master. My mastership is total and complete.”

So the journey consists of this: from will to witness, and from witness to tathata.

-Osho

From And Now and Here, Discourse #15

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

The Mysteries of the Seven Bodies – Osho

In yesterday’s talk you said that the seeker should first worry about his own receptivity and should not go begging from door to door. But the very meaning of a sadhak is that there are obstacles on his path of spiritual growth. He does not know how to be receptive. Is it difficult to meet the right guide?

To seek and to ask are two different things. Actually, only he who does not want to seek asks. To seek and to ask are not one and the same; rather, they are contradictory. He who wants to avoid seeking asks. The process of seeking and the process of begging are very different. In asking the attention is centered on the other – on the giver; in seeking the attention is centered on oneself – on the receiver. To say that there are obstacles in the path of spiritual growth means there are obstacles within the seeker himself. The path too lies within and it is not very difficult to understand one’s own hindrances. It will have to be explained at length what obstacles are and how they can be removed. Yesterday I told you about the seven bodies. We shall talk in greater detail about these and it will become clear to you.

As there are seven bodies, so there are also seven chakras, energy centers, and each chakra is connected in a special way with its corresponding body. The chakra of the physical body is the muladhar. This is the first chakra and it has an integral connection with the physical body. The muladhar chakra has two possibilities. Its first potentiality is a natural one that is given to us with birth; its other possibility is obtainable by meditation.

The basic natural possibility of this chakra is the sex urge of the physical body. The very first question that arises in the mind of the seeker is what to do in regard to this central principle. Now there is another possibility of this chakra, and that is brahmacharya, celibacy, which is attainable through meditation. Sex is the natural possibility and brahmacharya is its transformation. The more the mind is focused upon and gripped by sexual desire, the more difficult it will be to reach its ultimate potential of brahmacharya.

Now this means that we can utilize the situation given to us by nature in two ways. We can live in the condition that nature has placed us in – but then the process of spiritual growth cannot begin – or we transform this state. The only danger in the path of transformation is that there is the possibility that we may begin to fight with our natural center. What is the real danger in the path of a seeker? The first obstacle is that if the meditator indulges only in nature’s order of things he cannot rise to the ultimate possibility of his physical body and he stagnates at the starting point. On the one hand there is a need; on the other hand there is a suppression which causes the meditator to fight the sex urge. Suppression is an obstacle on the path of meditation. This is the obstacle of the first chakra. Transformation cannot come about with suppression.

If suppression is an obstruction, what is the solution? Understanding will then solve the matter. Transformation takes place within as you begin to understand sex. There is a reason for this. All elements of nature lie blind and unconscious within us. If we become conscious of them, transformation begins. Awareness is the alchemy; awareness is the alchemy of changing them, of transforming them. If a person becomes awake toward his sexual desires with his total feelings and his total understanding, then brahmacharya will begin to take birth within him in place of sex. Unless a person reaches brahmacharya in his first body it is difficult to work on the potentiality of other centers.

The second body, as I said, is the emotional or the etheric body. The second body is connected to the second chakra – the swadhishthan chakra. This too has two possibilities. Basically, its natural potential is fear, hate, anger, and violence. All these are conditions obtained from the natural potential of the swadhishthan chakra. If a person stagnates at the second body, then the directly opposite conditions of transformation – love, compassion, fearlessness, friendliness – do not take place. The obstacle on the meditator’s path in the second chakra is hate, anger and violence, and the question is of their transformation.

Here too the same mistake is made. One person can give vent to his anger; another can suppress his anger. One can just be fearful; another can suppress his fear and make a show of courage. But neither of these will lead to transformation. When there is fear it has to be accepted; there is no use hiding or suppressing it. If there is violence within there is no use in covering it with the mantle of nonviolence. Shouting slogans of nonviolence will bring no change in the state of violence within. It remains violence. It is a condition given to us by nature in the second body. It has its uses just as there is meaning to sex. Through sex alone other physical bodies can be given birth. Before one physical body falls, nature has made provisions for the birth of another.

Fear, violence, anger, are all necessary on the second plane; otherwise man could not survive, could not protect himself. Fear protects him, anger involves him in struggle against others and violence helps him to save himself from the violence of others. All these are qualities of the second body and are necessary for survival, but generally we stop here and do not go any further. If a person understands the nature of fear he attains fearlessness, and if he understands the nature of violence he attains nonviolence. Similarly, by understanding anger we develop the quality of forgiveness.

In fact, anger is one side of the coin, forgiveness is the other. They each hide behind the other – but the coin has to be turned over. If we come to know one side of the coin perfectly we naturally become curious to know what is on the other side – and so the coin turns. If we hide the coin and pretend we have no fear, no violence within, we will never be able to know fearlessness and nonviolence. He who accepts the presence of fear within himself and who has investigated it fully will soon reach a place where he will want to find out what is behind fear. His curiosity will encourage him to see the other side of the coin.

The moment he turns it over he becomes fearless. Similarly, violence will turn into compassion.

These are the potentials of the second body. Thus, the meditator has to bring about a transformation in the qualities given to him by nature. And for this it is not necessary to go around asking others; one has to keep seeking and asking within oneself. We all know that anger and fear are impediments – because how can a coward seek truth? He will go begging for truth; he will wish that someone should give it to him without his having to go into unknown lands.

The third is the astral body. This also has two dimensions. Primarily, the third body revolves around doubt and thinking. If these are transformed doubt becomes trust and thinking becomes vivek, awareness. If doubts are repressed you never attain to shraddha, trust, though we are advised to suppress doubts and to believe what we hear. He who represses his doubts never attains to trust, because doubt remains present within though repressed. It will creep within like a cancer and eat up your vitality. Beliefs are implanted for fear of skepticism. We will have to understand the quality of doubt, we will have to live it and go along with it. Then one day we will reach a point where we will begin to have doubt about doubt itself. The moment we begin to doubt, doubt itself, trust begins.

We cannot reach to the clarity of discrimination without going through the process of thinking. There are people who do not think and people who encourage them not to think. They say, “Do not think; leave all thoughts.” He who stops thinking lands himself in ignorance and blind faith. This is not clarity. The power of discrimination is gained only after passing through the most subtle processes of thinking. What is the meaning of vivek, discrimination? Doubt is always present in thoughts. It is always indecisive. Therefore, those who think a great deal never come to a decision. It is only when they step out of the wheel of thoughts that they can decide. Decision comes from a state of clarity which is beyond thoughts.

Thoughts have no connection with decision. He who is always engrossed in thoughts never reaches a decision. That is why it invariably happens that those whose life is less dominated by thoughts are very resolute, whereas those who think a great deal lack determination. There is danger from both. Those who do not think go ahead and do whatever they are determined to do, for the simple reason that they have no thought process to create doubt within.

The dogmatists and the fanatics of the world are very active and energetic people; for them there is no question of doubting – they never think! If they feel that heaven is attained by killing one thousand people, they will rest only after killing one thousand people and not before. They never stop to think what they are doing so there is never any indecision on their part. A man who thinks, on the contrary, will keep on thinking instead of making any decision.

If we close our doors for fear of thoughts we will be left with blind faith only. This is very dangerous and is a great obstacle in the path of the meditator. What is needed is an open-eyed discretion and thoughts that are clear, resolute, and which allow us to make decisions. This is the meaning of vivek: clarity, awareness. It means that the power of thinking is complete. It means we have passed through thoughts in such detail that all the doubts are cleared. Now only pure decision is left in its essence.

The chakra pertaining to the third body is manipur. Doubt and trust are its two forms. When doubt is transformed trust is the result. But, remember, trust is not opposed or contrary to doubt. Trust is the purest and most ultimate development of it. It is the ultimate extreme of doubt, where even doubt becomes lost because here doubt begins to doubt even itself and in this way commits suicide. Then trust is born.

The fourth plane is the mental body or the psyche, and the fourth chakra, the anahat, is connected with the fourth body. The natural qualities of this plane are imagination and dreaming. This is what the mind is always doing: imagining and dreaming. It dreams in the night and in the daytime it daydreams. If imagination is fully developed, that is to say if it is developed to its fullest extent, in a complete way, it becomes determination, will. If dreaming develops fully it is transformed into vision – psychic vision. If a man’s ability to dream is fully developed he has only to close his eyes and he can see things. He can then see even through a wall. At first he only dreams of seeing beyond the wall; later he actually sees beyond it. Now he can only guess what you are thinking, but after the transformation he sees what you think. Vision means seeing and hearing things without the use of the usual sense organs. The limitations of time and space are no more for a person who develops vision.

In dreams you travel far. If you are in Bombay you reach Calcutta. In vision also you can travel distances, but there will be a difference: in dreams you imagine you have gone, whereas in vision you actually go. The fourth, psychic body can actually be present there. As we have no idea of the ultimate possibility of this fourth body, we have discarded the ancient concept of dreams in today’s world. The ancient experience was that in dream one of the bodies of man comes out of him and goes on a journey.

There was a man, Swedenborg, whom people knew as a dreamer. He used to talk of heaven and hell and that they can only exist in dreams. But one afternoon, as he slept, he began to shout, “Help! Help! My house is on fire.” People came running, but there was no fire there. They awoke him to assure him that it was only a dream and there was no danger of fire. He insisted, however, that his house was on fire. His house was three hundred miles away and it had caught fire at that time. On the second or third day news came of this disaster. His house was burnt to ashes, and it was actually burning when he cried out in his sleep. Now this is no longer a dream but a vision. The distance of three hundred miles was no longer there. This man witnessed what was happening three hundred miles away.

Now scientists also agree that there are great psychic possibilities of the fourth body. Now that man has set out in space, research in this direction has become all the more important. The fact remains that no matter how reliable the instruments at man’s disposal, these cannot be relied upon completely. If the radio communication in a spaceship ceases to function the astronauts lose contact with the world for all time. They will not be able to tell us where they are or what has happened to them. So today scientists are keen to develop telepathy and vision of the psychic body to overcome this risk. If the astronauts were able to communicate directly with the power of telepathy it would be a part of the development of the fourth body. Then space travel can be safe. A lot of work has been carried out in this direction.

Thirty years ago a man set out to explore the North Pole. He was equipped with all that was necessary for wireless communication. One more arrangement was also made which has not made known up until now. A psychic person whose fourth body faculties were functioning was also made to receive the transmission from the explorer. The most surprising thing was that when there was bad weather the wireless failed, but this psychic person received the news without any difficulty. When the diaries were compared later on it was found that eighty to ninety-five percent of the time the signals received by the psychic person were correct, whereas the news relayed by the radio was not available more than seventy-two percent of the time, because there were many breakdowns. Now Russia and America are both very eager, and a great deal of work is going on in the field of telepathy, clairvoyance, thought projection and thought reading. All these are the possibilities of the fourth body. To dream is its natural quality; to see the truth, to see the real, is its ultimate possibility. Anahat is the chakra of this fourth body.

The fifth chakra is the vishuddhi chakra. It is located in the throat. The fifth body is the spiritual body. The vishuddhi chakra is connected to the spiritual body. The first four bodies and their chakras were split into two. The duality ends with the fifth body.

As I said before, the difference between male and female lasts until the fourth body; after that it ends. If we observe very closely all duality belongs to the male and the female. Where the distance between male and female is no more, at that very point all duality ceases. The fifth body is non-dual. It does not have two possibilities but only one.

This is why there is not much effort for the meditator to make: because here there is nothing contrary to develop; here one has only to enter. By the time we reach the fourth body we develop so much capability and strength that it is very easy to enter the fifth body. In that case how can we tell the difference between a person who has entered the fifth body and one who has not? The difference will be that he who has entered the fifth body is completely rid of all unconsciousness. He will not actually sleep at night. That is, he sleeps but his body alone sleeps; someone within is forever awake. If he turns in sleep he knows it; if he does not he knows it. If he has covered himself with a blanket he knows it; if he has not then also he knows it. His awareness does not slacken in sleep; he is awake all the twenty-four hours. For the one who has not entered the fifth body, his state is just the opposite. In sleep he is asleep, and in the waking hours also one layer of him will be asleep.

People appear to be working. When you come home every evening the car turns left into your gate; you apply the brake when you reach the porch. Do not be under the illusion that you are doing all this consciously. It happens unconsciously by sheer force of habit. It is only in certain moments, moments of great danger that we really come into alertness. When the danger is so much that it will not do to go about lacking awareness, we awaken. For instance, if a man puts a knife at your chest you jump into consciousness. The point of the knife for a moment takes you right up to the fifth body. With the exception of these few moments in our lives we live like somnambulists.

Neither has the wife seen the husband’s face properly nor has the husband seen the wife’s face. If the husband tries to visualize the wife’s face he will not be able to do so. The lines of her face will start slipping away and it will be difficult to say whether it was the same face he has seen for the last thirty years. You have never seen, because there must be an awakened person within you to see.

One who is “awake” appears to be seeing but actually he is not – because he is asleep within, dreaming, and everything is going on in this dream state. You get angry, then you say, “I do not know how I got angry; I did not want to.” You say, “Forgive me! I did not want to be rude; it was a slip of the tongue.” You have used an obscenity and it is you who deny the intention of its use. The criminal always says, “I did not want to kill. It happened in spite of me.” This proves that we are going about like an automaton. We say what we do not want to say; we do what we do not want to do.

In the evening we vow to be up at four in the morning. When it is four o’clock and the alarm goes off we turn over saying there is no need to be up so early. Then you get up at six and are filled with remorse for having overslept. Then you again swear to keep the same vow as yesterday. It is strange that a man decides on one thing in the evening and goes back on it in the morning! Then what he decides at four in the morning changes again before it is six, and what he decides at six changes long before it is evening, and in between he changes a thousand times. These decisions, these thoughts, come to us in our sleepy state. They are like dreams: they expand and burst like bubbles. There is no wakeful person behind them – no one who is alert and conscious.

So sleep is the innate condition before the beginning of the spiritual plane. Man is a somnambulist before he enters the fifth body, and there the quality is wakefulness. Therefore, after the growth of the fourth body we can call the individual a buddha, an awakened one. Now such a man is awake. Buddha is not the name of Gautam Siddharth but a name given him after his attainment of the fifth plane. Gautama the Buddha means Gautam who has awakened. His name remained Gautam, but that was the name of the sleeping person so gradually it dropped and only Buddha remained.

This difference comes with the attainment of the fifth body. Before we enter into it, whatever we do is an unconscious action which cannot be trusted. One moment a man vows to love and cherish his loved one the whole life and the next moment he is quite capable of strangling her. The alliance which he promised for a lifetime does not last long. This poor man is not to be blamed. What is the value of promises given in sleep? In a dream I may promise, “This is a lifelong relationship.” What value is this promise? In the morning I will deny it because it was only a dream.

A sleeping man cannot be trusted. This world of ours is entirely a world of sleeping people; hence, so much confusion, so many conflicts, so many quarrels, so much chaos. It is all the making of sleeping men.

There is another important difference between a sleeping man and an awakened man which we should bear in mind. A sleeping man does not know who he is, so he is always striving to show others that he is this or he is that. This is his lifelong endeavor. He tries in a thousand ways to prove himself. Sometimes he climbs the ladder of politics and declares, “I am so and so.” Sometimes he builds a house and displays his wealth, or he climbs a mountain and displays his strength. He tries in all ways to prove himself. And in all these efforts he is in fact unknowingly trying to find out for himself who he is. He knows not who he is.

Before crossing the fourth plane we cannot find the answer. The fifth body is called the spiritual body because there you get the answer to the quest for “Who am I?” The call of the ‘I’ stops once and for all on this plane; the claim to be someone special vanishes immediately. If you say to such a person, “You are so and so,” he will laugh. All claims from his side will now stop, because now he knows. There is no longer any need to prove himself, because who he is, is now a proven fact.

The conflicts and problems of the individual end on the fifth plane. But this plane has its own hazards. You have come to know yourself, and this knowing is so blissful and fulfilling that you may want to terminate your journey here. You may not feel like continuing on. The hazards that were up to now were all of pain and agony; now the hazards that begin are of bliss. The fifth plane is so blissful that you will not have the heart to leave it and proceed further. Therefore, the individual who enters this plane has to be very alert about clinging to bliss so that it does not hinder him from going further. Here bliss is supreme and at the peak of its glory; it is in its profoundest depths. A great transformation comes about within one who has known himself. But this is not all; there is further to go also.

It is a fact that distress and suffering do not obstruct our way as much as joy. Bliss is very obstructive. It was difficult enough to leave the crowd and confusion of the marketplace, but it is a thousand times more difficult to leave the soft music of the veena in the temple. This is why many meditators stop at atma gyan, self-realization, and do not go up to brahma gyan, experience of the Brahman – the cosmic reality.

We shall have to be alert about this bliss. Our effort here should be not to get lost in this bliss. Bliss draws us towards itself; it drowns us; we get immersed in it completely. Do not become immersed in bliss. Know that this too is an experience. Happiness was an experience, misery was an experience; bliss too is an experience. Stand outside of it, be a witness. As long as there is experience there is an obstacle: the ultimate end has not been reached. At the ultimate state all experiences end. Joy and sorrow come to an end, so also does bliss. Our language, however, does not go beyond this point. This is why we have described God as sat-chit-ananda – truth-consciousness-bliss. This is not the form of the supreme self, but this is the ultimate that words can express. Bliss is the ultimate expression of man. In fact, words cannot go beyond the fifth plane. But about the fifth plane we can say, “There is bliss there; there is perfect awakening; there is realization of the self there.” All this can be described.

Therefore, there will be no mystery about those who stop at the fifth plane. Their talk will sound very scientific because the realm of mystery lies beyond this plane. Things are very clear up to the fifth plane. I believe that science will sooner or later absorb those religions that go up to the fifth body, because science will be able to reach up to the atman.

When a seeker sets out on this path his search is mainly for bliss and not truth. Frustrated by suffering and restlessness he sets out in search of bliss. So one who seeks bliss will definitely stop at the fifth plane; therefore, I must tell you to seek not bliss but truth. Then you will not remain long here.

Then a question arises: “There is ananda: this is well and good. I know myself: this too is well and good. But these are only the leaves and the flowers. Where are the roots? I know myself, I am blissful – it is good, but from where do I arise? Where are my roots? From where have I come? Where are the depths of my existence? From which ocean has this wave that I am arisen?”

If your quest is for truth you will go ahead of the fifth body. From the very beginning, therefore, your quest should be for truth and not bliss; otherwise your journey up to the fifth plane will be easy but you will stop there. If the quest is for truth, there is no question of stopping there.

So the greatest obstacle on the fifth plane is the unequaled joy we experience – and more so because we come from a world where there is nothing but pain, suffering, anxiety and tension.

Then, when we reach this temple of bliss, there is an overwhelming desire to dance with ecstasy, to be drowned, to be lost in this bliss. This is not the place to be lost. That place will come, and then you will not have to lose yourself; you will simply be lost. There is a great difference between losing yourself and being lost. In other words, you will reach a place where even if you wish you cannot save yourself. You will see yourself becoming lost; there is no remedy. Yet here also in the fifth body you can lose yourself. Your effort, your endeavor, still works here – and even though the ego is intrinsically dead on the fifth plane, I-am-ness still persists. It is necessary, therefore, to understand the difference between ego and I-am-ness.

The ego, the feeling of ‘I’, will die, but the feeling of ‘am’ will not die. There are two things in “I am,” the ‘I’ is the ego and the ‘am’ is asmita – the feeling of being. So the ‘I’ will die on the fifth plane, but the being, the ‘am’, will remain: I-am-ness will remain. Standing on this plane, a meditator will declare, “There are infinite souls and each soul is different and apart from the other.” On this plane the meditator will experience the existence of infinite souls, because he still has the feeling of am, the feeling of being which makes him feel apart from others. If the quest for truth grips the mind the obstacle of bliss can be crossed – because incessant bliss becomes tedious. A single strain of a melody can become irksome.

Bertrand Russell once said jokingly, “I am not attracted to salvation, because I hear there is nothing but bliss there. Bliss alone would be very monotonous – bliss and bliss and nothing else. If there is not a single trace of unhappiness – no anxiety, no tension in it – how long can one bear such bliss?”

To be lost in bliss is the hazard of the fifth plane. It is very difficult to overcome. Sometimes it takes many births to do so. The first four steps are not so hard to cross, but the fifth is very difficult. Many births may be needed to be bored of bliss, to be bored of the self, to be bored of the atman.

So the quest up to the fifth body is to be rid of pain, hatred, violence and desires. After the fifth the search is in order to be rid of the self. So there are two things: the first is freedom from something; this is one thing and it is completed at the fifth plane. The second thing is freedom from the self, and so a completely new world starts from here.

The sixth is the brahma sharira, the cosmic body, and the sixth chakra is the agya chakra. Here there is no duality. The experience of bliss becomes intense on the fifth plane and the experience of existence, of being, on the sixth. Asmita will now be lost – I am. The I in this, is lost at the fifth plane and the am will go as soon as you transcend the fifth. The is-ness will be felt; tathata, suchness will be felt. Nowhere will there be the feeling of I or of am; only that which is remains. So here will be the perception of reality, of being – the perception of consciousness. But here the consciousness is free of me; it is no longer my consciousness. It is only consciousness – no longer my existence, but only existence.

Some meditators stop after reaching the Brahma sharira, the cosmic body, because the state of “I am the Brahman” has come – of “Aham Brahmasmi,” when I am not and only the Brahman is. Now what more is there to seek? What is to be sought? Nothing remains to be sought. Now everything is attained. The Brahman means the total. One who stands at this point says, “The Brahman is the ultimate truth, the Brahman is the cosmic reality. There is nothing beyond.”

It is possible to stop here, and seekers do stop at this stage for millions of births, because there seems to be nothing ahead. So the Brahma gyani, the one who has attained realization of the Brahman, will get stuck here; he will go no further. This is so difficult to cross because there is nothing to cross to. Everything has been covered. Does not one need a space to cross into? If I want to go outside of this room there must be someplace else to go. But the room has now become so enormous, so beginningless and endless, so infinite, so boundless, that there is nowhere to go. So where will we go to search? Nothing remains to be found; everything has been covered. So the journey may halt at this stage for infinite births.

So the Brahman is the ultimate obstacle – the last barrier in the ultimate quest of the seeker. Now only the being remains, but non-being has yet to be realized. The being, the is-ness, is known, but the non-being has yet to be realized – that which is not still remains to be known. Therefore, the seventh plane is the nirvana kaya, nirvanic body, and its chakra is the sahasrar. Nothing can be said in connection with this chakra. We can only continue talking at the most up to the sixth – and that too with great difficulty. Most of it will turn out to be wrong.

Until the fifth body the search progresses within a very scientific method; everything can be explained. On the sixth plane the horizon begins to fade; everything seems meaningless. Hints can still be given but ultimately the pointing finger breaks and the hints too are no more because one’s own being is eliminated. So the Brahman, the absolute being, is known from the sixth body and the sixth chakra.

Therefore, those who seek the Brahman will meditate on the agya chakra which is between the eyes. This chakra is connected to the cosmic body. Those who work completely on this chakra will begin to call the vast infinite expanse that they witness the third eye. This is the third eye from where they can now view the cosmic, the infinite.

One more journey yet remains – the journey to non-being, nonexistence. Existence is only half the story: there is also nonexistence. Light is, but on the other side there is darkness. Life is one part, but there is also death. Therefore, it is necessary also to know the remaining nonexistence, the void, because the ultimate truth can only be known when both are known – existence and nonexistence. Being is known in its entirety and non-being is known in its entirety: then the knowing is complete. Existence is known in entirety and nonexistence is known in its entirety: then we know the whole; otherwise our experience is incomplete. There is an imperfection in brahma gyan, which is that it has not been able to know the non-being. Therefore, the brahma gyani denies that there is such a thing as nonexistence and calls it an illusion. He says that it does not exist. He says that to be is the truth and not to be is a falsity. There simply is no such thing, so the question of knowing it does not arise.

Nirvana kaya means the shunya kaya, the void from where we jump from the being into the non-being. In the cosmic body something yet remains unknown. That too has to be known – what it is not to be, what it is to be completely erased. Therefore, the seventh plane in a sense is an ultimate death. Nirvana, as I told you previously, means the extinction of the flame. That which was I, is extinct; that which was am, is extinct. But now we have again come into being by being one with the all. Now we are the Brahman, and this too will have to be left. He who is ready to take the last jump knows the existence and also the nonexistence.

So these are the seven bodies and the seven chakras, and within them lie all the means as well as the barriers. There are no barriers outside. Therefore, there is not much reason to inquire outside. If you have gone to ask someone or to understand from someone, then do not beg. To understand is one thing, to beg is another. Your search should always continue. Whatever you have heard and understood should also be made your search. Do not make it your belief or else it will be begging.

You asked me something; I gave you an answer. If you have come for alms you will put this in your bag and store it away as your treasure. Then you are not a meditator but a beggar. No, what I told you should become your quest. It should accelerate your search; it should stimulate and motivate your curiosity. It should put you into greater difficulty, make you more restless and raise new questions in you, new dimensions, so that you will set out on a new path of discovery. Then you have not taken alms from me, then you have understood what I said. And if this helps you to understand yourself, then this is not begging.

So go forth to know and understand; go forth to search. You are not the only one seeking; many others are also. Many have searched, many have attained. Try to know, to grasp, what has happened to such people and also what has not happened; try and understand all this. But while understanding this, do not stop trying to understand your own self. Do not think that understanding others has become your realization. Do not put faith in their experiences; do not believe them blindly. Rather, turn everything into questioning. Turn them into questions and not answers; then your journey will continue. Then it will not be begging: it will be your quest.

It is your search that will take you to the last. As you penetrate within yourself you will find the two sides of each chakra. As I told you, one is given to you by nature and one you have to discover. Anger is given to you; forgiveness you have to find. Sex is given to you; brahmacharya you have to develop. Dreams you have; vision has to evolve.

Your search for the opposite will continue up to the fourth chakra. From the fifth will start your search for the indivisible, for the non-dual. Try to continue your search for that which is different from what has come to you in the fifth body. When you attain bliss try to find out what there is beyond bliss. On the sixth plane you attain the Brahman, but keep inquiring, “What is there beyond the Brahman?” Then one day you will step into the seventh body, where being and non-being, light and darkness, life and death, occur together. That is the attainment of the ultimate… and there are no means of communicating this state.

This is why our scriptures end with the fifth body, or at the most they go up to the sixth body. Those with a completely scientific turn of mind do not talk about what is after the fifth body. The cosmic reality, which is boundless and unlimited, begins from there, but mystics like the Sufis talk of the planes beyond the fifth. It is very difficult to talk of these planes because one has to contradict oneself again and again. If you go through the text of all that one Sufi has said you will say this person is mad. Sometimes he says one thing and sometimes something else. He says, “God is” and he also says, “God is not.” He says, “I have seen him” and in the same breath he says, “How can you see him? He is not an object that the eyes can see!” These mystics raise such questions that you will wonder if they are asking others or asking themselves.

Mysticism starts with the sixth plane. Therefore, where there is no mysticism in a religion, know that it has finished on the fifth body. But mysticism also is not the final stage. The ultimate is the void – nothingness. The religion that ends with mysticism ends with the sixth body. The void is the ultimate; nihilism is the ultimate, because after it there is nothing more to be said.

-Osho

From In Search of the Miraculous, Discourse #16

You can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

Tag: tathata

A Rhythm of One – Osho

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Take Note Twice: The Buddhist Meditation Technique of Taking Note – Osho

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No Water, No Moon – Osho

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It Remains in its Suchness – Osho

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The Essence of Buddha Dharma – Osho

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Will, Witnessing and Suchness – Osho

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The Mysteries of the Seven Bodies – Osho

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